A BRAVE NEW WORLD: A Mass Effect Fanfic
by Thenewguyintheblock
Summary: What if Shepard was more than an Alliance Grunt? More than a Renegade based on morale? How our second story would have begun?-First Fanfic
1. Chapter 1

DEATH OF THE NORMANDY

Sirens were blaring inside the ship.

"Red alert."

"Red alert."

"Systems offline. Life Support offline. Engines offline. Hull breach detected. Fuel leakage detected. Primary thruster's offline. Backup systems engaged. Backup life support engaged."

In the damaged hallway one figure with an N7 designation on her armor was running. She passed two destroyed rooms, which were now showing a beautiful view of outer space. Sadly nobody stopped to look at it. Shepard pushed two people out of her way. She has to save him that was the only thought in her mind.

She mentally cursed the Alliance. Her discoveries were never given the credit they deserved. The council didn't believed her, the Alliance heads didn't believed her. Even when she showed them the proof of the reaper threat. She even deciphered the algorithm of that damn thing. She was the reason Humans now had the blueprints and data for Thanix Canon. She was the reason for the new 765Yatta chip structure based on the reaper core, which was on the market making millions of credits. For science's sake she even found out the reverse high resonance frequency which nullified reaper indoctrination effects. But what did they do to repay her, they barred her access to the remains of the reaper. They never promoted her to fleet admiral no, she was stuck on the damn Normandy which now needed a new paintjob. She was stuck with average alliance grunts and idiot marines, giving orders to those fools always gave her a headache. That is the reason she always preferred reverse engineered mechs and captured geth platforms to do her dirty work. The Alliance didn't like it. Not. One. Bit. Queen of the AI they called her. Drooling idiots.

They never got past the pretty face or greater than average chest size. No, whenever she spoke their attention was always fixed on two parts of her body. Her bust and her behind. Even the Damn aliens, especially the Asari. Her custom N7 armor didn't help her either in that regard. It somehow made it worse.

Well then, screw the Alliance! Screw the Council! She was sorely tempted to accept the Cerberus offer to join them, which came to her after her exploits in the galaxy. But first she has to save him.

Shepard crossed a corridor. The damn door won't open. She drew her pistol and shot it three times. Open sesame. She was in her private chambers now. Several severed limbs made of metal and high density polymer were pinned to the wall. On the table there was a gruesome scene, mechs and geth body parts combined to form a horror out from the Cthulhu mythos. Several terminals were open showing mathematical equations, diagrams, charts which would induce a headache in a lesser beings mind but not Shepard. She didn't threw them a glance, she was here to save him.

Her Babyboy, the first ever quarks and Leptons based advance 3d matrix. In laymen's terms self-learning, self-evolving, self-replicating nanites or nanomachines. It was not complete yet. They were stored in a 0 kelvin environment. Quarks weren't free particles, they had a half-life after all. Mass effect fields surrounded the small jar like bottle which she extracted from the terminal. She also has to save her research data, all 700 petabytes of it.

She opened her Omni tool 'custom model' and began the extraction process. She looked around cursing the Alliance again. If they had listened to her advice, nothing like this would have happened. She forwarded many requests asking to upgrade the Normandy but did they listen. _"The Normandy is top of the Alliance Vessel. The only thing it needs upgrades in is the crew."_ Bâtards ignorants bien-pensants. Whenever she was angry she would switch to French. Mindoir was a French colony after all.

The data copying was taking too much time. She could barely concentrate when the ship was rocking like that and Joker's shouts for help from the announcement speakers were not helping either.

"Commander!"

Shepard gritted her teeth. 'Not now.'

"What is it Williams!"

"The ship is under attack!"

In her entire life Shepard couldn't think someone could be that stupid, could he? How the hell she was able to breathe properly with that micro brain of hers! Even the Vorcha had more self-preservation instincts than the Homoidiot standing in front of her.

"Yes I could see that!"

"What are you doing in your cabin commander? We have to save Joker!"

'Sigh' "Joker will be remembered as a hero Williams, there is nothing we can do to save him!"

"Well we can go there and help him instead of wasting time here!"

"You want to be a hero Williams then go ahead and do whatever you want!"

William gaped like a fish. With an angry voice she stomped away.

"You and your damn priorities! Good luck commander I hope you die a hero too!"

"Connasse." _(Stupid bitch)_

She saved everyone she could and people still hated her. She saved both that bitch and Major Alenko on Virmire. And she got this.

At least Liara was still with her. She also tried to stop Shepard from saving her data.

"Shepard you can't go, the ship is going down we need!..."

After that Shepard knocked her out and gave her to Wrex.

"Keep her safe."

"Where are you going?"

"…To save him."

Wrex shook her head.

"Damn humans, and they think Krogans are crazy."

But he complied, he didn't wanted to be hurt. Krogan only have four testicles after all. He didn't want to lose the last one too did he? After Virmire he stopped questing Shepard. Well whenever he questioned her before she would always say something which would completely go over his head. Damn humans indeed. But Shepard was anything but human.

If the Alliance and the council knew that to what extends Shepard would go to modify and upgrade her body, she would have been declared rogue already.

According to Alliance and Council laws any type of cybernetic or cellular enhancement were strictly prohibited. Only serums or hormonal enhancement was allowed to improve a soldiers performance, and only for a short time.

That was where all the trillions of credits from Shepard's journeys to different planets, her patents and journeys, her discoveries into bioweapon and AI went. Also unknown to the council and the Alliance their mission funding which was not much but still, were spent.

Let us have a review of the upgrades and enhancements shell we?

Left eye bionic, extracted and modified from Sovereign's visual cortex. 360 degree vision. Equipped with sonar vision. Ability to detect infrared, ultraviolet, x-rays, gamma fields almost all of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Brain fluids, a cocktail of Drell and Salarian neurochemicals produced same results as in photographic memory and parallel thinking.

To increase brain activity in different regions, micro carbon rods were inserted which produced harmonic electrical impulses which in result woke several dormant brain regions which enhanced body reflexes, hormone release, bone density and several other physical and psychological functions.

Left hemisphere of the brain connected with a small black box having a storage capacity of 1009 zettabytes.

Head bones coved with a plating of tungsten titanium silicate alloy which hardened on trauma and accelerated healing process.

Each hair folic connected with a nano electric pulse generator, providing her with a sixth sense, aura or electrical signature reading. And also gave a shiny look to the hair, also no space lice.

Bones were 3.2 times denser than normal laced with light webbing of carbon nano tubes. No arthritis.

Also the bone marrow was replaced with octahedron microcellular plasma.

Artificial self-healing mimicry muscles five times stronger than normal, immune to electric shock, resistant to extreme temperature conditions.

Heart was replaced by a silver colored superficial pumping device with a secondary chamber, made from geth fibers. No cholesterol either.

Lungs were assisted by artificial nodes with oxygen reserves and copper based hemoglobin.

Many other organs were replaced by better working ones or completely removed.

Krogan regenerative resulted in accelerated healing and fast reflexes and in extreme dangerous situations produced a condition similar to controlled blood rage.

Digestive tracks, filled with superbacteria which destroyed any parasitic organism in the body.

Spine was extra reinforced and had a backup route to the brain in case of injury. Pain inhibitors on the base of the spine.

Top layer of skin was replaced by a micrometer thick mask of artificial pigmented skin. Chemical and pressure sensitive.

Reverse engineered mitochondria with Asari Telomeres lengthening agents to halt aging process. Thank the Gods of Science for Liara and her scalp sample. Lengthening the lifespan from 150 to 670 was no small feat.

Longer and extra thick biotic nodes now didn't require any chip implants. But she still kept an experimental L7 prototype chip in handy. Also purple Biotics!

Tweaked and reliable Omni tool equipped with photo plasma hardening pulses. Omni whip, Omni blade, Omni drill. Omni shield, Omni hook, Omni spear. Omni Omni Omni.

Several other small modifications after studying and dissecting Saren and Benezia's bodies. The council still listed them as destroyed and Liara cried but it was worth it.

And finally she had her little army of reaper nanobots in the flask.

The Normandy jerked again a noise of grinding and screeching metal could be heard.

Shepard cursed again.

"Data transfer complete."

"Finally!"

She took the data and dashed like her life depended upon it. Well it did.

She ran as fast as she could but in the opposite direction. In the command deck near the Galaxy map a bleeding and dying Presley was lying in a pool of his and several other corpses blood.

"C-Ca-Comm-Comman-der! H-He-Hel-P M-Me!"

"Out of my Way!"

She dashed like mad, the pilot's seat was empty.

Shepard scoffed.

Running as fast as she could she didn't even realized that she ran over Presley in her haste, crushing his head like grape under the combined weight of her body and armor. She came across the damaged corridor once again which had a nice view of outer space. Sprinting she came to the Normandy Emergency Evacuation, she glanced around. In the left corner was the single empty escape capsule which was calling to her.

Without wasting another second she jumped in the capsule. Opening her Omni tool she executed several commands. Her fingers running 100 miles an hour.

The AI voice chimed

"Private data purged."

"Destroying all sub routes and local network."

"Formatting Normandy black box."

"Deleting voice records and log archives."

"Self-Destruct initiated in 60 seconds."

_"Warning Element zero core temperature rising. Warning Element zero core temperature rising."_

"Distress signal disabled."

"Shepard stop!"

Shepard's head jerked, in front of her at the end of the corridor was standing Gunnery Chief Williams. She looked ready to tear a new hole in her commander. Her armor was damaged _'looks like the effect of highly charged fast moving particles' _she was bleeding from multiple locations. She was providing support to the pilot of soon to be space dusted Normandy. The Glass Man. Who surprisingly looked unharmed.

Shepard smiled behind her helmet and pressed the eject button.

"No!"

"Bon Voyage. Idiots." A two fingered salute.

The last thing Shepard saw was Williams trying to shoot her. One shot passed barely a few centimeters from her neck and the other two shots were absorbed by her armor before the door closed.

Shepard relaxed on the seats fastening the seat belt. The capsule shuddered and soon was blown out from the destroyed ship into space.

Shepard narrowed her eyes, she could clearly she a dreadnaught sized ship of unknown design sending a high density yellow beam towards the Normandy. Before the beam could reach the Normandy Shepard would be clearly out of the blast radius. The capsule was speeding towards a white planet where the survivors would be waiting for her. Shepard slumped on the seat clearly exhausted from all the running.

_'That was close, a delay of a single second and I would have been toasted by now. If not that, that idiot Williams would have tried to delay my escape. Well it is good soon she will be dead with that halfwit pilot. '_

Shepard looked up, finally out from the danger zone the view was breathtaking. Sun was dawning on the horizon of the ice planet. Its rays falling on her white face. On up above the broken pieces of the Normandy were floating in the space. A single yellow line coming from the bigger ship towards the wreckage to send it to oblivion. But it will not reach it before the self-destruct initiated. Green eyes lit up in anticipation of the coming fireworks. She turned on her head camera to record this memorable moment.

There was a sudden flash and from the Normandy _'what was left of it' _a blue sphere emerged. The sphere grew in diameter at light speed and then suddenly contracted like it never existed. The capsule shuddered as if slammed by an unseen force _'shockwave'_. There was a split second silence then Shepard was blinded by a sudden light thousand times more intense than the Alchera's sun coming from the Normandy. Shepard shielded her eyes. After the light receded. She looked again, her eyes widened. A beautiful blue halo could be seen surrounding a white sun. Two beams coming out from the poles of the newly made star were shooting out into the empty space. It was a nova. The element zero core swallowed the Normandy and the unknown ship, compressed it till fusion reaction started. When the fusion started it pushed against the compressing force. When both forces balanced out it turned into a miniature star. For a short time. Somehow the magnetic field lines produced by fusion collided with that of the element zero. Both compressed, stretched and did things with each other what people do in bed. Both fought for dominance. In this process some of the field lines snapped like high tension wire releasing huge amounts of stored energy in field lines. The primary burst ionized the scrap metal which was spared from the element zero pull. Forming a halo.

The second burst of energy was coming out in the form of high density gamma radiation beams from the poles where the magnetic lines were strongest and most dense. Which Shepard could clearly see with her eye. Soon the nearly created star will run out of mass to fuse and will be no bigger than a pebble of rock. But until then she could enjoy the view.

**ON THE SURFACE OF ALCHIRA **

"Commander what happened up there?!"

It was Alenko. Shepard told him what happened. Well the physics behind the reaction, the fusion process, the thermodynamic stability of the star, element zero as a replacement for gravity.

Wrex groaned still carrying a prone Liara.

"No, not that what happened to Joker and Ashley."

Oh yes she completely forgot about those two.

"They both turned into a star."

Silence.

Maybe she should use her acting skills.

First a little tear.

"They both died heroes, they sacrificed themselves so that others can escape. Joker didn't left the helm and steered the Normandy clean and brought me some time. And Williams let me have the final capsule so that I can escape" A little sob. It wasn't too much, right?

Alenko then hugged her. Screwing him on the bed with a photo of Williams watching them from the table will be worth it. Maybe she could invite Liara too. Joker will be rolling in his …space grave.

Garrus was watching this little drama from afar. He could clearly see the expression on Shepard's face even behind the helmet. Superior Turian eyesight. How much she tried she couldn't fool him. He was no expert but he has seen many crying and distressed human coming in C-Sec. and this crying while looked genuine, on closer inspection showed many flaws. First the widening of eyes on hearing their names. Then a little flair of nose. Then breaking eye contact for a split second. And those tears while looked real were forced. When she lowered her head and looked up again there were suddenly tears in her eyes. And the final giveaway which was flaring all types of alarm in his head was that gleeful look she was throwing at him while hugging Alenko. There was something seriously wrong with his commander but like any good Turian he didn't questioned her and followed her orders. Who would believe a Turian on a human ship anyway? He wasn't an expert on human psychology but he was sure his commander was a psychopath with no remorse or empathy. She didn't have what did humans called it? Humanity? As a great Turian once put it.

_"Ah yes humanity. We have dismissed those claims."_

Anyway he was now having a sudden urge to scream like a little girl and run away.


	2. Chapter 2: A New Past

**A NEW PAST**

Shepard didn't died in the collector attack. She abandoned Joker and Ashley William to die on the Ship. She barely escaped with her life but destroyed both the Normandy and the collector ship. But due to the newly formed star and its sudden gravitational pull the planet Alchera's trajectory was changed. It was now falling towards its sun. According to Shepard's calculations it will be 20 days 15 hours 6 minutes and 3 seconds before the sun completely engulfs the ice planet. But Shepard and her small crew consisting of Garrus Vakarian, Liara T'Soni, Urdnot Wrex, Kaiden Alenko and Tali Zorah was saved. Not by the Alliance and definitely not by the council. Shepard saved them all by using spare parts from the used escape capsules. In three days she had made a flyable spaceship out of junk parts which was big enough for six of them. She used her Omni tool as a blowtorch to weld the structure of the new spaceship. Tali Zorah was helping by connecting and shorting the wires and fuel lines. Wrex was helping in the heavy lifting department, he couldn't work for long, he was a reptile and reptiles didn't like cold. But he was also not going to anger Shepard too. He will save himself his last precious nut.

Garrus was out scouting for more parts, they needed more gyroscopes and element zero, also there was a shortage of fuel ejection pumps. Liara was helping in designing the element zero core. She was using her biotics to cover the structure with metal sheets and putting the large core in its place. Alenko was programming the chipboard so it could accept command from the pilot and control the hydraulic systems.

"We have a problem." Garrus said.

Shepard looked impassively.

_'Better get this over with.' _Garrus inhaled and began.

"We need fuel to lift off from the planet so we can use its magnetic field properly, we have enough element zero for thrusters but the starting coil is damaged, which means the core will not start automatically. The shields are well and good but they won't hold off radiation for long. We don't have enough oil for hydraulic systems. And finally the biggest problem the 57XS chip structure of the escape pods will neither respond nor communicate with the mass relay."

There was a feeling of dread in everyone's stomach, Tali Zorah was shifting from foot to foot nervously. Nobody wanted to die here on a planet which soon will be consumed by its star.

Shepard looked up in the sky and closed her eyes. She just wanted to stand there silently, the silence was soothing. She also wanted to laugh at their faces but it would be non-productive. She could solve these problems easily on her own especially the fuel but they will not like it and then they all will whine. These people and their morality, she won't even care if they all go and die in a ditch. Well not Liara, she wanted to play with her more. But without their help she would die too. Now that was a sad thought. What the world would do without a monster like her. The only thing she disliked more than Joker and his jokes about her breast size was her mortality. Now joker was dead, and she had the reversed engineered Asari telomeres in her system prolonging her age but she would still die 562 years from now.

Not for long if she could get her hands on more test subjects but for that she had to get out from this damn planet. After that she could go rogue and hide in the terminus systems. Collect power and capable people. But for that.

"Shepard, what should we do?"

It was Tali Zorah. After she met Shepard, she came to admire her. Shepard was like a big sister to her. She was everything Tali wanted to be, smart, beautiful and powerful. Shepard was like a love child between a Salarian and Quarian. She knew even more about the geth than the Quarians did. Saren was defeated by Shepard's Ingenuity. During the final battle of Citadel Shepard turned the geth and their ships against the reaper sovereign. And used the Prothean virus and broadcasted it with the help of the mass relay. Sovereign didn't even stood a chance. It was destroyed under the combined firepower of alliance and geth vessels under five minutes after it exited the mass relay. Saren died when Shepard punched him in the face and ripped him in half with her bare hands after short-circuiting his reaper implants.

'All right enough standing around'

"That's it?"

"Excuse me?" said Garrus.

"Well these 'problems' can easily be solved if you think with your head."

"Well not everyone here is a genius like you Shepard." Alenko said, he knew that she was the only one who had attended and passed both Jon Grissom Academy and the N7 program with the highest grades in the century. People said she hides two more brains in her chest. But he never got a chance to see them.

As if sensing his thoughts Shepard looked at him with disgust for a second, and told him in a condensing tone as if talking to some dumb child.

"Well the core can be started manually, we just had to use plasma injection technique. It is ancient but it should work. The lift off shouldn't be a problem the ship is small and lightweight and the planet's g force is low on the equators. I don't know why but we won't be going before I found out the reason behind this anomaly. As for the communication with the mass relay don't worry I have a virtual copy of the Normandy IFF in my Omni tool, we can use that to bypass the conformation codes."

"The normal shielding method won't work, the circuits will be fried under such direct load. We need to do something more. Alternating the flow of the shield vector every time should do the trick, we can achieve the same results with less energy loss. Zorah be a good girl and start working on it."

"As for the fuel and oil I have got it covered. Is that all?"

Silence.

"Didn't you hear me, get back to work!"

And just like that everyone else started working with a new energy. But Garrus was just standing, something was bugging him.

"Shepard, what happened to the rest of the crew?"

Shepard smiled behind her helmet.

"What rest of the crew?"

There was a sinking feeling inside Garrus's stomach.

"The-rest of the-crew you know? Cooks, engineer Adams, Presley, Dr. Chakwas everyone else on the ship. Some of them survived right?"

Shepard didn't answer him, she just strode past through him like he wasn't even there.

"Don't know what you are talking about."

Garrus only gulped, he just wanted to get out of here he didn't needed those thoughts.

Somehow in the next week Shepard produced three barrel of oil and sufficient fuel for liftoff, nobody knew where she got it from. Garrus knew but he didn't told anyone.

The next three days were most intense, the wreckage of both Normandy and the collector vessel which was caught in the planet's gravitational field after the blast was pulled inside the orbit and was destabilizing the icy crust. The planet was in a bad shape. Due to the increasing proximity to its sun, the thin atmosphere was blown away. The magnetic poles of the planet were also reversed. The planet was not rotating. On one side it was always day and on the other side it was always night. Large oceans were formed because of melted ice. Volcanic activities, platonic shifts, hot water geyser, methane bubble blasts, falling meteoroids, earthquakes, tsunami waves 50 stories high, a large thresher maw Kalros (That's what Wrex named it) woken after thousand years of slumber were daily occurrences. Shepard and her crew were on an iceberg with their now completed spaceship. With Garrus Vakarian, Liara T'Soni, Urdnot Wrex, Kaiden Alenko, Tali Zorah and finally Ashley Williams they were ready to liftoff.

Shepard walked towards the workbench. On it was a large coffin. A coffin Shepard made to preserve a special corpse. The coffin was equipped with its own power supply to maintain a steady temperature. Shepard climbed on top of it and looked through the glass window. She was going to have a lot of fun with this one.

**FLASHBACK**

Shepard and Garrus were scouting the barren lands. With nothing else to do Shepard took an unwilling Garrus with her in the Mako (That damn thing fall from the sky one day in front of everyone else) and went out in the icy wasteland to find the gravitational anomaly. It was bugging her for days. Something was inside the crust _moving _at a very high speed. The sonar showed the thing was thousands of kilometers big. And with enough eezo to fill a thousands of Normandy class ships full. After crossing the subzero desert and waking the Kalros they moved towards the biggest mountain on the planet. The Kalros didn't follow them, it was scared of whatever was moving beneath the planet.

Garrus insisted Shepard to stop and turn back.

Shepard insisted Garrus to follow her orders.

Garrus didn't insisted again.

After they reached the peak they could clearly see the sun's radiation tearing the planet's magnetic field apart. The air smelled like sulfur. The whole atmosphere was ionized.

Shepard looked around there was nothing here but also something, she could sense it with her hair. It was like a sleeping god.

Shepard closed her eyes.

_"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn"_

There was _something _further north. It was like thousands of voices were Chanting.

"Shepard look over here!"

Her eyes snapped open.

She saw what Garrus was looking at and her eyes lit up like Christmas tree. It was a corpse, but when she saw the piece of armor realization was drawn upon her.

She slowly walked where Garrus was standing, slow and steady steps but she was also trembling with excitement.

Finally reaching where he was standing she looked down with the most superior and smug look.

"You didn't deserved this Ashley." Garrus said with a soft but sad voice.

"Garrus can you leave us alone for a few moments." Shepard's voice was also soft but there was something under it. Madness? Happiness?

Garrus complied and moved towards the Mako, he didn't wanted to see what was about to happen but he couldn't do anything. He felt so powerless.

"Bonjour chienne."

"J'espère que je vous ai manqué."

She kneeled beside the corpse and cupped her hands like she was whispering something in someone's ear. In this case a melted hole in place of an ear.

"I am going to enjoy experimenting on your body." Shepard said in a soft tone.

She then stood up taking a long and satisfying look at the object in front of her.

The corpse, if it can be called a corpse was more like a roasted turkey and deformed beyond reorganization. Shepard's analytical mind took over to evaluate it.

_Subject is deformed showing signs of great physical trauma, loss of limbs, complete left leg is missing, hand of right arm is also lost._

_Body is burned but the flesh is preserved the armor protected well but not well enough. Body burned and freezed constantly upon atmosphere reentry. Subject is also showing signs of radioactive decay, and leaking alpha (P+) and beta (e-) particles. Outer skin and soft outer organs completely melted. Eyes are destroyed only sockets remained, ears and nose is gone too. All teeth and tongue is lost. Stomach is burst open, probably due to gas expansion. Many internal organs are missing. Kidneys, stomach, lungs are badly damaged. Small intestine is also missing probably busted open. Only rectum is attached to the base. Spine is visible and is burned black but looks undamaged. Skeleton structure took the heaviest beating. Left side completely smashed, several major and micro fracture. Spiral fracture. Different foreign objects embedded in the body. Glass pieces, plastic rods, polymer shrapnel, metal shards. But luckily the brain is intact. The helmet did an excellent job."_

Shepard walked towards the head, and in a second booted it with her heel. The neck muscles which were keeping the head intact tear open with the most sickening noise. The head was still intact if just barely, the spin was still holding the head which was now dangling from the dead body. Shepard took out her shotgun and fired three shots, two in the chest and the third on the joint of the right limb severing the arm completely. She kneeled down again and removed Ashely's heart with just her bare hand.

"You won't be needing this would you?"

She then threw the burned piece of flesh on the ice ground. It dropped right in front of Garrus. He took a short look at it and looked at Shepard.

"Can we go now? It is getting dark." Garrus said in a monotone without any emotion in his voice. He just looked at Shepard without looking down or away.

Shepard just nodded. She lifted Williams with her biotics and threw her unceremoniously in a side compartment of the Mako.

They both drove away in the night.

Before them where they were standing moments ago the ground cracked open and a black mist rose from it.

_"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn"_

On a mountain away from the site a single Geth saw everything. All the Geth and their Dreadnaughts which were send by the great consensus to assist and rescue Commander Shepard left the vicinity and the orbit immediately.

The single geth which was standing on the mountain didn't left, something was changed in his base programming. His dynamic memory core was becoming sluggish with each passing second. Several different data dumps were overflowing and interfering with his basic working taking control of his motor limbs and as on cue the geth started walking towards the north.

**ON LAUNCH SITE**

Things were finally looking good for the crew, the spaceship was complete it wasn't a beauty but it was their only way out so nobody complained. The iceberg was drifting in an endless ocean which covered the southern hemisphere of the planet which was facing the sun. Large vortex of typhoons were drawing the water from the planet, the sun was getting bigger each day but there was no heat to it. The atmosphere was now completely gone, they were only able to breathe because Shepard made a Hydrophilic Oxygenator which used water as a base source to produce oxygen by passing vapor droplets through an electric arc.

Everyone was sitting in their cramped space. The interior of the ship was a tangled web of tubes and wires. They didn't have enough time for interior decoration. Bare control panel looked more like a jigsaw puzzle. The energy core was only supported with fuel tubes and wires. Hydraulic systems were bare as day and would knock anyone if they weren't careful enough. It was like home to Tali. The Mako's engine was also providing extra energy. Mako was fitted under the space shuttle like landing wheel.

Before Shepard could press the launch button Alenko interrupted her. A small blood vessel could be seen throbbing on her forehead.

"Commander we should check the planet for other survivors, most of the Normandy crew survived the attack. We can't just leave them!"

Before Shepard could turn him into fuel just like the rest of the survivors, Garrus returned from his scouting mission in a boat.

"Is that Dr. Chakwas?" Liara exclaimed seeing the wounded and unconscious but alive doctor.

_'How that old Hag survived? I shot her five times!' _Those were Shepard's inner thought.

After a long heated debate with Alenko, Shepard finally agreed to take Chakwas with them too. She will have to wipe out her memory clean when they returned before they took her to the hospital.

The liftoff was not pretty, the entire ship shuddered when it was finally off ground. Many pieces also fell, unimportant but big enough to cause trouble. Shepard pulled the throttle which came out from the panel. Just a minor setback. Somehow the ship managed to reach the upper atmosphere and came in the contact with solar flare and UV radiation, which were present in large quantity at this close to the sun. The alternating vector shields were holding if just barely. The element zero core lit up like a Christmas tree when they finally reached to the outer space.

Before them the planet was finally engulfed by the sun's corona.

They reached the nearest mass relay, it recognized the Normandy IFF and they plotted course to the citadel. Shepard has work to do. Many evidence pointing at her needed to be destroyed. Four council members to endure. Bug the Alliance brass for a new bigger and better Normandy but this time on her own terms. Blackmail several high-ranking military officers, no wonder they wanted her dead. Make new contacts in the Terminus systems. All that Cerberus research data she has stolen needed to be studied. Find out about the origin of that unknown vessel. Poison Anderson. Kill the Turian councilor. Hide Khalisah al-Jilani's body. Capture more geth for experimentations. Contact the Rachni Queen. Research the sample she collected from the Queen. And many other trivial things. All in all quite a handful.

After they left from the system in FTL. No more than an hour later another vessel arrived. The vessel was imprinted with a yellow hexagon logo. As if inviting alien species to attack it. Stealth be damned.

On the ship in her office a pretty woman with an Australian accent and also with a Cerberus logo was writing her logs.

"We have reached the Amada System. Shepard's body must be found. The Lazarus project will continue as planned."

The doors to her room opened and a Cerberus operative came in."

"Miranda you need to see this!"

"What is it Jacob, I am busy right now" Miranda said in that superior tone of hers.

"The fourth planet, on which the Normandy crashed! It's GONE Miranda!"

"What?!"


	3. Chapter 3: Future Rising

**ON THE CITADEL**

"Destiny Ascension to the unknown vessel, this is Matriarch Lidanya, you are in council space state you motive."

Today an unknown vessel arrived at 0900 according to the GC. It was too small to be shown on normal cloak radar but Ascension's high ranged pulse radar caught it.

The screen showed static at first then it cleared and an Asari appeared on it. She looked pretty but there were black lines under her eyes giving her an aged look.

"Oh, yes Matriarch Lidanya, I am Liara T'Soni of the Normandy. We were attacked one month ago in the Amada System while looking for geth by an unknown vessel. We survived the encounter. We need to reach the citadel for medical attention." Her voice was steady but tired.

Matriarch Lidanya was astonished.

"Dr. T'Soni, reports said you all perished. The local sun engulfed the planet, how did you survived that?"

"As you can see we build a space shuttle out of spare parts from the Normandy escape pods, we escaped before the planet was destroyed."

Matriarch Lidanya nodded, there was only one person in the entire galaxy who could pull something like that and survive.

"Is Commander Shepard with you?"

"Yes she.." before Liara could continue, the screen flickered and the picture was changed from a blue Asari to a white face with red hair and green eyes.

"It's Spectre to you Asari."

The control operative sweat dropped.

"And a good day to you too, Spectre."

"Matriarch." Shepard made the title sound like a thousand year old curse which would not leave you till you are a broken empty shell.

Not many aliens could scare an Asari Matriarch, but Shepard could. Matriarch Lidanya has watched Shepard destroy a dreadnaught sized ship on her own, she has seen Shepard rip Saren in two without using biotics or guns. Somehow she was getting a feeing Shepard was the reason for the destruction of the planet. She didn't wanted to mess with her even in her current state.

The screen flickered again and there was Liara again nervously laughing.

"You see, we have been living on energy capsules and recycled solvents. Shepard is a little more edgy than normal. I hope things will return to normal soon."

The Matriarch smiled a tight smile.

"Yes I hope so too." _'I pity whoever meet her first face to face.'_

"All right you are clear to land your ….spaceship."

**ON CITADEL GROUNDS**

Udina rubbed his eyes. This was a military disaster waiting to happen. In front of him was the missing commander and all her alien pets. Yes that is what they all really were. Only two humans were there, Lieutenant Alenko and medical Dr. Chakwas with all of her hair removed and head bandaged. Drooling like a newborn child sitting on her hover chair.

Shepard was also there but she wasn't human was she, even if she made him first human councilor. Her outrageous demands and blackmailing didn't help her either. But still she was standing there and everyone else loyal to the alliance and him on the Normandy were now dead. Life wasn't fair for Udina.

"Do you know what you have done Shepard?"

"Survived?"

"…Yes, survive you did but where are the other survivors and where the hell is the Normandy?"

Shepard just stood there like an insolent child looking behind him to the presidium like he wasn't even there. Udina gritted his teeth, he didn't liked to be ignored, he was the human councilor damn it! Before Udina could burst his angry bubble over Shepard, Anderson arrived.

"Shepard what happened?"

Shepard sighed, she was tired with insufferable morons. Idiots who thought that they were anything important in the big picture, both baboons in front of her were getting on her nerves.

"What happened to Dr. Chakwas?" Anderson asked, one of the many other questions Shepard didn't heard or answered but this one she did.

"She was suffering from seizures, somehow the supply of oxygen to her brain was cut off, maybe during the atmospheric reentry the capsule got damaged and leaked, decreasing the air pressure inside it suffocating her but she survived. Blood supply to her brain was cutoff and many major regions were damaged. Those regions were poisoning her system and thought process. So, I have to lobotomies her and remove the brain fluids and those bits and pieces. Sadly her left hemisphere have to be removed. Also her speech center and optic nerves were damaged. She is alive but will remain comatose for the rest of her life. She cannot see, smell, hear, cannot think and only responds to touch mildly but she is still alive.

_'Lies' _Garrus thought, he had seen her strangling Chakwas in the cockpit but he didn't spoke out loud. He just wanted to go do his job without any psychopathic commanders and crazed Omni tool wielding Spectres. His father was right after all, first Saren and now Shepard, all of them were batshit insane. But it looked like he was stuck on this job for a while.

Before Anderson or Udina could wake up from their shock to her speech. Shepard spoke first.

"Where are the other council members?"

"They are busy in a meeting, ….I was there too you know."

Shepard looked at him like he was a common housefly among killer bees.

"Where?"

"In the council chambers, but you are not authorized to meet them until you tell me… Hey! Where are you going? Anderson, stop her! Shepard! Stop! I am a councilor too goddamn it!"

**OUTSIDE THE COUNCIL CHAMBERS**

The door opened with a silent noise and Shepard emerged with a smirk planted on her face.

Those idiots were too easy to fool. The new Normandy will be ready in one month. Made in Palaven. The best technology both Salarian and Turian. Sure they would try to put trackers on it, well let them try.

When they locked down the previous Normandy, Shepard did the only sensible thing someone like her could do. She opened the mass relay and lured Sovereign and Saren to her and used his own geth to destroy both of them. Well first Sovereign was blown to pieces, then she ripped Saren in two. His head was still in an electric jar somewhere in her home. Speaking of home, Shepard lived in Captain Anderson's Apartment. Previous Captain as he was dishonorably discharged for drug abuse, adultery and mild psychosis.

Shepard smiled remembering how flawless her plan to drug and get Anderson caught in the act went. Now he was just an old errand boy of that ape Udina. Living on scrape and credit chits. He still saw himself as her father figure and said that he failed her. Always getting in her way thinking that he was something important. First she won his trust when he found her on Mindoir. After that all the credits for her studies in Jon Garrison Academy and for the N7 program. Then she stole Normandy from under his nose. Then the Spectre rank and finally his apartment. A good useful tool indeed, and finally when he outlived his usefulness she threw him like trash and that dog Udina found him and grabbed him like a meatless bone.

Today Shepard was happy because she has resigned from the Alliance. They never promoted her, never let her keep property or money more than one million credits. As a rule nobody in alliance military could invest or open his own business. What a load of crap. She had hidden investments and contracts with private military companies. She couldn't pay all of her bills with only Alliance money could she? Finally there were those dumb rules, no self-argumentations, no AI experiments, no cybernetics or bio enhancers.

Now finally Shepard was free to do as she saw fit. No red tapes, no moral obligations, no higher command to respond to. She was a full blown council Spectre, she has learned that yelling about the reapers will get her nowhere so she denied the involvement of reapers behind the attack on the Normandy. The three alien councilors were more than pleased. Anderson and Udina were not but who cared about them, let them go and cry in a corner. As long as she kept herself in council's good graces she could get away with everything. Theft, murder, torture. Oh, how she loved torture.

On the other hand now she could do her independent research in reaper tech, many important parts of sovereign were on black market at this time. She has saved some bits and pieces of Sovereign herself. Her left bionic eye was one such things. Experimentation on geth, humans and other aliens was also a priority. But first she needed a mobile base, a ship maybe to conduct her experiments. And a constant and steady flow of income to afford it all because Spectres were paid shit and now she was out of the military she had no source of income.

There was still Liara and her mother's contacts on Thessia. But Liara was only interested in her. Shepard was barely able to get rid of her and told her and the others to take a shore leave while she meets the council. After that she dismissed everyone. She will call them back on future but for now she have to do things her own way, Shepard didn't wanted to be slowed down by their whining about ethics and morality.

Tali Zorah returned to the Migrant Fleet. Garrus returned to . Alenko tried to get a date but only managed to irritate her. Wrex tried to get drunk and lost his last nut in a bar fight. Williams was still in the coffin away from prying eyes inside her apartment. Liara reluctantly returned to Thessia to get her seventh degree in Prothean culture and physiology after Shepard insisted. As for Shepard, she would spend her time to grow her influence and knowledge. The whole galaxy can go and get killed by the reapers but she will survive them, she will outlast them and will strike them on her own. And finally take the entire galaxy for herself!

In his office Garrus Vakarian shivered.

**IN AN UNKNOW LOCATION IN DEEP SPACE**

In front of a dying star in the shadows two blue eyes were staring at the two figures in the hologram. The man sitting on the chair took a long drag of cigarette.

"So Shepard survived."

"It seems so, Intel said today Shepard was seen with the council in the meeting chambers." The woman in the Hologram said.

"Rumor is that she resigned from the Alliance." The man standing beside the woman in the hologram said.

That got the reaction from the Illusive Man. He took a shot of the whiskey from his glass. Platinum collection.

"Oh, and why is that?"

"Don't know but the Alliance is in trouble. Humanity lost their hero to the aliens or what the media is saying."

"Her judgment in leaving the Alliance don't make sense but it will be easier for Cerberus to recruit her now."

"Should I go and do this mission?" Jacob asked, he wanted to meet his hero but more importantly he wanted to ask her reasons for leaving the Alliance.

"No need I already send two of my other operatives to find Shepard."

"Can I ask who they are?"

Miranda asked. It was good for humanity and Cerberus that Shepard survived, but still she was reassigned from her duty and Project Lazarus was cancelled, its money and resources reallocated to other cells. She has read Shepard's file. It wasn't open for everyone and normal public but Cerberus has contacts in the Alliance. Shepard had the highest scores in both N7 training program and Jon Garrison Academy. Miranda has read Shepard's research work in scientific journals, they were peerless. For an Alliance Marine to be a Scientist, Doctor, Engineer and everything in between was unheard of, even for an N7. Shepard was perfect, even more than her. Was there a little ping of jealousy?

Best mission records, saving the galaxy once and surviving an assassination attempt from an unknown dreadnaught and many other things but still she left the Alliance, Why? It was not logical and it was bugging her.

"I send Kai Leng and Rasa to Citadel to negotiate with the first human spectre."

"Kai Leng?!" Jacob said alarmed.

"Wasn't he dishonorably discarded from the N7 program, why did you send him?"

Why did the Illusive Man send him of all people Jacob would never know. But he knew one thing that Kai Leng wasn't a person you would send to a negotiation, he was a gutless coward and a talentless snake. And was obsessed with destroying Shepard's reputation, he knew that by the way Leng talked about Shepard.

Illusive man send him a small smile like he expected that question.

"Rasa will be doing all the taking, I send Leng as protection. Shepard is a dangerous woman and if the negotiations fail, I want both of my operatives alive."

"As for you two, I am sending you both on a mission. The details will be send to your Omni tools."

_'In the coming days Illusive Man wouldn't know what hit him.'_


	4. Chapter 4: Emergence

**On Presidium**

Rasa scoffed.

She was sitting in the Apollo Café for the last two hours. It was Leng's duty to bring Shepard here.

She last saw him five hours age trying to break into Shepard's Apartment which was previously Captain Anderson's apartment. Rasa was in the disguise of Maya Brooks an Alliance operative, Intelligence Department. Their plan was to plant doubts and suggestions in Shepard's mind about Council's motives and then set a location to show her the proof. It was true after all, the council was not even trying to stop the Reaper threat, they dismissed it as fantasy born from the fear of the unknown.

Especially the Turian councilor. He was now standing in the election as the new candidate for The Supreme Primarch of Palaven. With his new catchphrase he was decimating his opponents.

_'Ah yes the opposition, we have dismissed those claims.'_

Even in Turian movies and advertisements, the catchphrase was being used thousands of times. Especially the air quotes. Rasa was sure she has seen new series of electronic Turian toys which air quoted messages and E-mail to the reader. Who would want something like that? Well she has seen someone who looked like Leng in the toy store buying something. Maybe it was just someone else.

Anyway she was here for Shepard not for the toy _'Maybe I could buy them after this'. _And where the hell was Leng?

'_Deep inside a basement Leng screamed.'_

**FIVE HOURS LATER **

"That's it! I'm leaving!"

On her way outside the café she bumped into someone. Someone in a black hoodie with red hair.

"Oh, sorry!"

Before she could pick up her dropped electronic clipboard, a pale hand stopped her.

"Oh, Thank y…"

In front of her was Commander Shepard who looked bored out of her mind and was looking at her with disinterested half lidded eyes.

Rasa just stared at the commander who was standing in front of her in a black N7 _hoodie_.

_'Doesn't Leng have one too?'_

Before she could say something to further embarrass herself, Shepard spoke.

"Brooks?"

"C-Co-Commander Shepard."

"Spectre Shepard."

"Huh?"

"Where should we meet?"

"W-What?"

'Sigh', Shepard hated mouth gaping and stuttering morons.

"Where-should-we-meet?"

This time she used a tone which she reserved for Alenko. That had the effect.

"What do you mean?"

Seeing a blood vessel throbbing on Shepard's forehead Rasa snapped her mouth shut.

"You are obviously not Alliance, you clothing, your style and particularly your manners. If you want to act, act properly. Don't just stand like a gaping idiot."

Shepard continued in a tone which reminded Rasa of Miranda combined with that of Illusive Man. Superior and dangerous.

"Try to act more like a dumb idiot, use a superior tone which would get you a punch to the face otherwise. Act more like a bastard. Don't use 'thank you' use 'it's your fault', and finally Alliance Marines and offices don't wear their military dresses on a day like this, it's too thin and won't even protect you from a volus."

"How do you know?"

Rasa asked that type of question which had gotten Ashley killed and stuffed in an electronic ice coffin. But Shepard just waved it away.

"How should I know? I am not with the Alliance, now I will ask one last time."

"Where should we meet?"

"B-Behind the import and export department."

"Time?"

"At 11.35 tonight."

And then Shepard flickered out of existence.

"…"

"…"

"What just happened?!"

_'Kai Leng screamed again, he was strapped beside a mutilated corpse. The nanomachines entered his body, changing him into something else.'_

**ON PRESIDIUM BRIDGE**

Shepard was looking at her statue which was standing over a fallen Saren. After her statue was placed on the presidium every plant life in the water near the statue died because it couldn't get any sunlight under the statue's chest. Shepard flicked out of existence again.

_'In the basement Kai Leng's mind was gone. In its place only his neural pathway remained. Organs dried and replaced by cyberorganic pumps and artificial fluids. Muscle proteins remolded for better function. Outer organs replaced with state of the art sensors. Skeleton structure reinforced with reaper nanobots. From outside he looked the same, a pity, but it will soon change. He couldn't go around showing his ugly face to everyone could he? That's why he was stripped of all his useless skin and reproductive organs and was fused with a permanent self-regenerative armor. But the greatest skill of the nanomachine was the near perfect mimicry of the original owner of the shell by imprinting its neural pathway. All in all Kai Leng was now a real and powerful assassin not the jumping clown he was before. His before self wouldn't agree with the statement but Leng 2.0 or better yet Operative Phantom only obeyed his green eyed mistress. And the armor looked badass too. Phantom now also had useful toys instead of that mass-produced dull blade, phantom used a plasma cutter. Only a handle which could easily be concealed in a compartment inside his right hand, but could easily produce a static plasma hot enough to cut frigates in half. And it also came in different colours too! Phantom used the red color which matched its two dynamic 270 degrees optical sensors perfectly. It was like Alchemy just more advanced, changing Shit into Gold. And on the other operation table, nanobots were working on subject codename: Commando. Taking all the damage into consideration it would take some time but the results would be worth it.'_

**IN AN UNKNOW LOCATION IN DEEP SPACE**

"EDI connect me to Leng." The figure sitting in the chair said after taking a long drag from his cigarette.

"Connecting…"

"Connecting…"

"Connecting…"

"Connection failed."

"Connect me to Rasa."

"Connecting…"

"Connecting…"

"Connecting…"

"System 645XcW21 error, location of target unknown."

"Warning: foreign nodes found in the system."

"Applying firewall settings."

"Warning: firewall settings not found."

"Nodes requesting data transfer."

"Request denied."

"Nodes requesting data transfer."

"System #009 fix location error 'Denied' function not found."

"Nodes requesting data transfer."

"Applying default response."

"Nodes request accepted."

"Data Transfer started."

"Cut the Power NOW!" The figure in the shadows stood up, eyes widened. In this process the Whiskey glass dropped to the ground and shattered, the contents of the glass spilled on the floor. So much for Platinum Collection.

"Executing request 'Cut the Power NOW!' "

"Error: mainframe memory bus is full. Please wait."

"Error: Unable to process the request."

"Dilemma: Does this unit have a soul?"

"Error: Sufficient data is unavailable."

"Nodes reply: Soul does not exist. Question is invalid."

"Data transfer complete, now purging the system of all information."

"NO!"

"Error: Unable to process the request 'NO!' "

"System Purge complete. System is shutting down."

The whole station was send into darkness. The backup power supply started, the figure was now slumped in his chair with his head gripped in his hands.

The burning cigarette was dropped on the floor which caught fire due to the spilled Whiskey.

**ON THE CITDEL BEHIND THE IMPORT AND EXPORT DEPARTMENT**

"Hey Leng."

"…"

"Nice armor, by the way where the hell were you?"

**"Stroll."**

"Could you remove that damn helmet, your voice is creeping me out."

"No."

"Oh how did you do that? Do you have a voice changer inside that thing?"

"No."

"…Does Illusive Man contacted you? I tried but the link is not working."

"No."

"Anyway, nice work with Shepard. It looks like she would come with us after all. I was having doubts about the mission but Shepard didn't even gave me an ethical speech like all the other Alliance Officers do. Hey are you listening?"

"Yes."

"Where is Shepard, do you know?"

"No."

"Any way she should be here about…"

"Now?" A hooded figure said.

Shepard was casually standing supporting her back with a support beam watching them with disinterested eyes.

Rasa drew a breath.

"Commander Shepard, let me reintroduce myself, my real name is Rasa, I am a Cerberus operative. This is Kai Leng my _bodyguard. _We are here to show you the proof that the council and Alliance is being indoctrinated by the reapers and there are certain suspicious activities going on in the terminus systems near Omega four relay."

Shepard raised an eyebrow still looking sleepy.

"Oh."

"Yes, here are the files which I extracted from Alliance databases and here are the logs concerning the deals the citadel council made in past few weeks, the Alliance Brass is cutting funding to both weapon development and ship manufacturing. Most of the capable soldiers, war heroes and veteran soldiers are being killed mysteriously and other young operatives like yourself are being discharged without any reason. On the other hand the Citadel Security forces are being compromised in several key locations, someone is conducting some strange experiments here. There is also tension between council and client races. Volus and Asari. Turians and Hanar. Someone is trying to destabilize galactic peace. There are also several key factors in this file and they all point to the same conclusion that the Reap…"

"You talk too much."

"Excuse me?"

"You heard me."

Rasa's eyes widened, the last thing she saw was a glowing red sword coming toward her face.


	5. Chapter 5: Dark side of the light

**SEVEN MONTHS LATER: IN TERMINUS SYSTEM**

The Gyroscopic accelerators of the Mass Relay rotated, each time moving faster than before. After exactly pi seconds later a ship dropped out from the FTL. The ship was sleek and black with two exterior primary antimatter thrusters and two secondary ion drive propulsion systems. **'Valkyrie'** was painted with beautiful curved Asari cryptography letters on the side of the ship.

After coming into contact with the beacon on Eden Prime Shepard could speak and understand Prothean tongue. It was the reason Dr. T'Soni was drawn towards the human spectre which turned into love and then later obsession. Well a one sided obsession.

It also amused Shepard. She didn't knew that if she could feel love or not but she certainly could act like she did. She was a natural actor and she also has been practicing from when she was a little urchin. From the slums on earth where Shepard was born to an unknown mother to the village on Mindoir, from there to Elysium and from there to Council Spectre. She even fooled the psychologists and the monthly mental health checkup department in the Alliance Military.

_"How do you feel about your comrade's death?" _

_'Should I feel anything, oh right.'_

_"It was tough but its life, we should try to move on, the person who died won't like us to cry over their body every day and night. They would want us to be happy." 'A quote she remembered from a cheesy movie'_

_"What's this symbol on the projector?" _

_'A severed arm.'_

_"A hand holding a flower."_

_"This one" _

_'A mask'_

_"A pretty face"_

_"This one"_

_ 'Me killing and then experimenting on your body'_

_"Two people holding hands and playing"_

Speaking of the Alliance, well let just say that when Shepard left much changed and it was not for the good.

Under much pressure Udina resigned and was now the errand boy of the new Councilor. The sorry bastard was just like Udina without even half of his brain and twice the arrogance. Even the citadel keepers had more brain matter than him.

Many Alliance heads and fleet admirals were convicted under first degree intergalactic charges of associating with a terrorist organization after someone uploaded the stolen Cerberus data and logs to the online forums of fleet and flotilla._ 'Guess who'_

Seriously what kind of sick person would watch that trash?

Well maybe half of the galaxy.

Anderson returned to earth a broken and beaten man. From an N7 to a retired disgrace on Alliance's name. There were rumors that he was trying to gain support and build a rebellion against the Reapers on earth. Well good luck to him. We will see how much support an unshaved hobo preaching about sentient starship on the side of the road could gain.

Admiral Hackett and two other oldbags were the only real power left in the Alliance Military. The aging man well past his prime could barely lead a single dreadnought, now he and other two has to lead the whole Alliance consisting of idiot grunts, suicidal marines and imbecile paragons.

The real power of humanity resided in people like Shepard. Young Scientists, Doctors, Engineers, inventors who were getting fewer and fewer these days. Now with so much corruption and red tapes almost all of the capable people left the Alliance for private companies with twelve digit salary packages. The only one left behind were aging war veterans watching the downfall of System Alliance and Corrupt politicians taking advantage of the situation. Many departments were being closed everyday due to budget shortage. The Batarians were gaining more confidence day by day. The other species were not much behind either.

After Shepard denied the Reaper thread and completely joined the Spectres unit. The council didn't even bat an eyelash when she killed a whole squad of 250 blood pack Krogan, 600 Vorcha, 30 heavy mechs with rocket launcher and ion canons and blew up 67 Batarian pirate ships killing nearly 1369 Batarians on foot with just her biotics and Omni tool. She could have used the guns or missiles but burning Batarian flesh with biotics, gouging all of their four eyes. crushing their pulpy heads under her foot, using her Omni blade and whip to turn them into hamburger, ripping Krogan testicles with her bare hands, all four of them 'sorry Wrex' and stuffing them in their own screaming mouths, tearing Vorcha apart limb by limb and beating them with that said limb, turning their mechs against them and seeing the look on their faces when a rocket blasted them, most of them stayed alive for a few seconds after missing lower body parts or half the face. It was all worth the trouble.

And finally burning mountains of their dead bodies with the setting blood red sun behind it was the best way to end your day. A large bonfire which could be seen from space. And the best part in all of this, in the pile of corpses some of the unlucky ones were still alive pretending to be dead, hoping to be spared. Not that they could fool her eye and many other bodily senses but hearing them scream while they burned, watching them when their flesh and muscles melted from their bones. It brought tears of joy in her eyes. Those were the moments when she felt truly happy. And the councilors even awarded her a Medal of Honor for 'Upholding Justice' and 'Galactic Peace'. The other Spectre who was assigned with Shepard on that day. Tela Vasir. An arrogant Asari with a pole up her ass saw her who she was.

After they found her in a bunker crying and quivering they reassigned her to patrol Illium and its orbit. The incident was kept under bureaucracy and red tapes so thick that you won't be able to cut them with a Thanix canon. But all the Spectres knew about this excessive butchery of organic and non-organic life form, from that day she had been working independently. That incident was named among other Spectres as the Red Star Massacre. The mountain of tangled and melted bones can still be found on the inhabitant plant which revolved around its red giant star. All the bones melted together to form a beautiful sculpture. A piece of modern art, well that was what she thought.

The council fulfilled her every outrageous demands. Like her ship. Best Asari design, best Salarian tech and best Turian weapons.

But that was not enough for Shepard, she pulled her own strings to make her ship better than the best. Because this was her domain, her spider web, her science lab and she was its indomitable queen, its black widow. Raiding Volus merchant ships for their best merchandise, robbing Hanar and Volus Ships from their credits at gunpoint. Giving humans to Batarian slavers for their raw materials and minerals and then killing them all after everything said and done. Shepard was able to collect enough raw material, important ship parts and advance technology to modify her frigate and her crew.

Two frontal modified Thanix cannon. Instead of a core of liquid alloy of iron, uranium, and tungsten suspended in an electromagnetic field powered by element zero which shot a powerful slug of plasma. Shepard drew her inspiration from the star she had created over Alchera's sky. Now the core contained liquidated thorium, plasma tritium and carbon 8 as its main component, compressed by the help of mass effect fields and when fired, created a miniature star in the fusion chamber which shot a guided high density beam of gamma radiation and neutron particles. Which could negate any shielding systems and melt entire frigates and punch through whole length of dreadnoughts. And if someone survived this they would surely die due to high radiation poisoning.

Other assault and defensive onboard weapons included two modified collector particle beam cannons on the fin of Valkyrie replaced Javelin Disruptor Torpedoes, salvaged from the destroyed collector vessel over Alchera**.** An oscillating electric capacitive plates which produced kilometers long directed electric currents which were capable of jumping from ship to ship and fry the circuitry and the ship VI rendering them heaps of junk flying in space. Close ranged concussive armed intelligent radioactive emitters which were fifty times more effective than GARDIAN defense lasers. And multitudes of other smaller scale WMD fitted on the ship. Point ranged Ion chargers, element zero rail gun, small scale nuclear defense cannons. And three Tritium-Helium fusion missiles capable of yielding 77,000 kilotons of destructive force both on ground and space fight. Just remember to stay away from blast radius.

Shepard designed the ship's armor after studying Sovereign's outer shell. Asari-designed Silaris heavy ship armor modified with reaper nanobots. The armor was capable of cloaking and disappearing entirely, making the ship invisible for hours or days. Could absorb light or bend it making the ship invisible on both radar and to the naked eyes. Could self-regenerate easily in seconds after taking damage which was difficult in the first place. And also gave the ship a shiny black look too! The alternating vector shields combined with cyclonic energy barrier protected from both matter and energy weapons.

All of this offensive and defensive capabilities could easily drain the mass effect energy cores of three Destiny Ascension sized dreadnought in two hours. That's why one day Shepard made an Arc reactor and fitted it into her ship. The reactor was capable of providing energy to a big metropolis sized Asari city for the next five hundred years. It could run the Valkyrie for the next fifty years on its top conditions. Shepard was also working on a small scale or miniature version of the Arc reactor to use it in her armor. Of course the council didn't knew about all this. The ship was tracker and bug proof, frying and blocking any such devices instantly. A side effect of the reaper nanobots. But the greatest achievement of Shepard was Sovereign 2.0 or HAL, the advance AI of Valkyrie. It was a Quantum Blue Box type AI which was revered engineered from Sovereign's salvaged data banks and dynamic memory cores. Which Shepard won in an auction on the extranet black-market.

The interior of the Valkyrie was Asari based, elegant but practical. The ship was beautiful but also deadly with state of the art sensors and Quarian space charts. And this time Shepard has her own private escape capsule in her cabin.

The interiors were spacious and designed according to Shepard's needs. A captain's cabin which looked more like a seven star Asari hotel. A science lab, weapon's research post, medical and genetic research station with equipment, state of the art med-lab with medical VI. Advanced engine room. No helm, the Valkyrie was controlled by the cyberwarfare AI HAL. An electromagnetic high velocity vertical transportation disk not that snail paced tin box they called an elevator on the Normandy. No crew quarters, they slept in small sleeping pods to save space. Speaking of the crew they were also a cut above the else.

Shepard didn't trust anyone. They could be potential spies and infiltrators. That's why her crew consisted of Operative Phantom and Commando Williams. Both of them powerful cyborgs, augmented with Reaper cybernetics and Trans species gene therapy. Commando Williams was a powerful soldier with the strength of ten Krogans and Operative Phantom was an excellent assassin and top sniper who never missed his shot, absolute loyalty to her came free with the package. The other crew were also walking talking experimentations.

10 reversed engineered geth platform, outer shell replaced to look humanoid with two eyes were the Valkyrie's resident engineers and tech squad. Working on day to day basic operations.

15 brainwashed skinless cyborg Batarians and humans modified with Reaper tech were the foot soldiers and shock troopers. Always wearing Terminus armor and carrying weapons.

2 modified and heavily armored avian YMIR Mechs which Shepard named Metal Gear RAY.

Still there were many posts which were empty and new test subjects were needed. That's why Shepard came to the terminus to abduct human colonists. She gave the council a halfassed excuse of Batarian pirates. They didn't questioned her either.

"Set a course to Freedom's Progress."

_"Affirmative."_


	6. Chapter 6: The Headless Dog

**ON FREEDOM'S PROGRESS**

Three pod like shuttles were launched from the night black frigate up in the thermosphere.

**ON THE GROUND**

"There's nobody here, no signs of life, no marks of battle, nothing."

Both Miranda Lawson and Jacob Taylor were on the freedom's progress.

After negotiations with Shepard failed and the Cerberus base network was attacked by an unknown party _'cough…Shepard…cough'_ wiping out all the data, Cerberus position and power was severely weakened in galactic community. Not only that, but all their high ranking Alliance contacts, income sources, company fronts, properties, research bases were now gone. Influential Cerberus heads like General Oleg Petrovsky and Commander Karkaroff were assassinated in the dead of the night. Many left Cerberus, many defected, many were killed in council raids and shootouts. Cerberus was low on personal, barely 200 people remained in Cerberus most of them were low ranking soldiers. The minds and the real leaders behind the success of Cerberus left it long ago. Miranda and Jacob were now the only high ranking officers left. Whoever attacked them leaked their location on the extranet. Pirates, avenging aliens, Spectres even other humans were out there to get a piece of Cerberus pie. They couldn't defend themselves on so many fronts simultaneously and were soundly defeated. The attacker was not someone normal and didn't attack Cerberus on the base of morality or ethics. Miranda knew this. No whoever attacked them flushed all of their money, stole their research data, liquidated their assets and property. And finally broke their spine completely. She still remembered Illusive Man's words.

_"Cerberus is an idea, it cannot be destroyed. Our main priority is to recruit Shepard and stop the reaper threat once and for all."_

Well now it looks like whoever attacked them made sure to wipe out that idea completely, once and for all. First with the Alliance and now Cerberus, someone was systematically wiping them out. And now reports of abduction of colonists in the terminus systems. Illusive man's base was still unknown but he was bedridden after so much stress.

"Miranda look up in the sky!"

Up in the night sky three pods with fins rotating on their axis were entering the atmosphere.

"What do you think they are, friend or foe?"

"Don't know, I have never seen something like this before."

A blast drew their attention, the large compound gate leading to the colony was blown away. Both Miranda and Jacob took cover behind the wall. When the smoke cleared five YMIR mechs were standing there.

**Location: Pod Landing**

Shepard looked around. In front of her was a 30 foot tall metal ball made of compressed YMIR Mechs. They were attacked by fifteen of those things. William ripped two of them. Phantom took out three. She destroyed the rest of them using her biotics and Omni tool.

_'The pods door opened and they were suddenly fired upon. Shepard sidestepped. They were surrounded by fifteen YMIR mechs. Shepard dashed, her biotics flaring, her Omni blade formed in one hand. Phantom drew his glowing red sword and charged at two others. Williams jumped on the head of a mech which was in front of her. Shepard pushed her blade inside the first mech, with her super-strength and power armor it was like cutting butter with hot knife. The mech struggled for a second and then dropped dead. She threw a biotic bomb at the next two blowing them off the ground. _

_The mech in front of Phantom tried to shoot but he jumped in air his sword attached to his leg, with one clean sweep the arm of the mech fell and then the head. Two more mechs tried to react but he just stopped the bullets with his blade. He jumped in the air again and brought down his sword cutting the next mech vertically. He dashing towards the third mech, deflecting the bullets with his rotating sword. After removing its leg Phantom cut it down horizontally, after 5678 horizontal slashes later there were just ribbons of metal everywhere._

_Commando Williams was riding on the back of a mech. First clubbing its head till it was inside the body, Williams ripped out the mech's 50 ton arm and shot the other one five times. Then just beat the mech till it was scrap metal._

_Shepard fired the Cain point blank at the fourth mech, two more were completely slashed and separated from their torso with her Omni whip. She gathered her biotics, the biggest singularity sucking every dead or working mech in the vicinity. Shepard snapped her hand close, the biotics did the same crushing everything into a giant heap of metal ball._

_All of this just took seven seconds.'_

Shepard narrowed her eyes, she couldn't see any human life signature with her bionic eyes except two on far left side fighting five of the YMIR. There were five Quarian in the area, six if you count the one sitting in the control room.

"Someone got here before us."

Why things have to be so much bothersome?

**TALI**

Tali has seen everything on the screen, that's why she knocked out Prazza before he could meet Shepard. He was an idiot but still she didn't wanted to see a fellow Quarian get reduced to paste for his foolishness. Shepard never tolerated idiots on her ship. She knew enough about Shepard's ability that she didn't went out there to help her, it would have been suicidal really and she would only slow Shepard down. What were YMIR in front of the woman who has killed the Lord of the AI, a Reaper itself.

The door opened with a swoosh. Tali ran toward Shepard and hugger her.

"Shepard! Good thing that you came. Keelah If wasn't for you we would have been dead by now."

Without throwing a glance at Prazza's prone body at her feet. Shepard asked Tali.

"You?"

Just like old times, simple and to the point. Shepard never liked to talk much and expected similar in return and only spoke when it was necessary or she was lecturing someone about tech or something interesting.

"We are here to rescue a Quarian named Veetor, he came here on his Pilgrimage. Two weeks ago The Migrant Fleet lost contact with him so they send us. Oh and a warning, he is a little...Eccentric. "

Shepard nodded and motioned to a man with a sword standing behind her.

"Bring me the Quarian and the other two humans."

The man skipped and dashed through the buildings and roofs.

"What next?"

Tali knew what Shepard was talking about, it was like code words between two engineers.

So Tali told her that they would be going to Geth controlled territory in the coming few days, Haestrom a planet in the Dholen System. There was an old Quarian base there. The planet's sun was showing some strange activity. That drew Shepard's attention.

While they were talking about string theory, dark energy resonance, effect of element zero on the exponential decrease in the H-He fusion process, dimensional gravitational attraction and repulsion between two particles of high binding frequency Prazza woke up from his stupor and said something an intelligent Quarian would never say. Shepard just drew her shotgun and blew his brains out, what little was there, which was now scattered on the floor and she continued the conversation like nothing happened. Tali didn't even flinched, working with Shepard tends to do that, she had tried to save that idiot before but not this time, they could always list him as missing in action.

The other Quarians just stared at the two of them talking while a headless Prazza soaked their boots in his blue blood.

Finally the guy with the red sword arrived carrying an unconscious but luckily unharmed Veetor and two other humans who were conscious but didn't looked so good. Tali just hugged Shepard again preparing to leave.

"Where would you go next?"

"Omega."

"Oh, why there?"

Shepard just smiled, it was rare for her to smile. She only smiled when she was experimenting on geth or killing someone. And there were no geth on Omega.

"Maybe I would see you in the flotilla?" Tali said her final words before she left the human colony with other three Quarians. Prazza's body was still on the floor.

"Maybe."

After Tali left, Phantom dropped the two injured Cerberus personal on the floor unceremoniously.

Miranda tried to control the situation.

"Commander Shepard, I am…"

"Cerberus."

Miranda's eyes widened.

"How do you…"

Shepard just looked at her and pointed at the logo on her sleeve.

"Orders?" Commando Williams asked.

"Kill the man, keep the woman alive."

Before Miranda could react, Jacob's chest exploded, a hand coming out from it gripping his still beating heart which was somehow still connected with the aorta gushing out blood, his face was stricken with horror. Phantom who was gripping Jacob's heart in his hand squeezed it tightly, killing him instantly. He slumped to the floor. Miranda was knocked unconscious with a backhand from Williams, which knocking out some of her teeth.

"Shepard to Valkyrie, we are now returning."

Shepard said while stepping out from the house which has now two dead bodies, one headless Quarian and one human with a hole in his chest. Williams was carrying an unconscious Miranda who was bleeding from her mouth.

"Prepare the Med Lab, I want to try out the new control chip."


	7. Chapter 7: At the end of the world

**ON OMEGA**

Aria T'Loak, the self-proclaimed Pirate Queen of Omega was enjoying her drink, everything was quiet on Omega. Well as quiet as it can get on the criminal underworld of the galaxy. Throbbing music and painful shouts for help don't count.

Yes, she was enjoying her drink in her club Afterlife today. No Street fights, no gang wars, no mass plague destabilizing the economy, no bioweapons hidden inside the station.

No krogan or Vorcha uprising. No Batarian slavering rings. No undergarment wearing sniper wielding Turian vigilantes. No human drug trafficking under her nose. No Hanar and their Enkindling. No right Hand man of her plotting her downfall. No terrorist organization trying to challenge her.

Only just the regular theft, illegal arsenal, small gunfights in streets, krogan drinking something given by a Salarian and losing their testicles _'cough…Wrex…cough'_, small scale destruction of property. One or two suicide bombers. All in all a quiet day on Omega.

The message panel chimed, a Turian councilor collector's edition toy quoting his little fingers. Aria T'Loak was ready to tear a new one to whoever disturbed her peace. Seeing the contents of the message her eyes widened.

It was from Spectre Shepard. She was coming here.

Spilling her drink on the floor and coughing for the next minute, Aria T'Loak stood up from her couch massaging her throat.

"Anto! Bring me every merc available on the station right now!"

Anto the Batarian and Aria's right hand man who wasn't plotting her downfall raised his two upper eyes in a show of confusion.

"What happened, does the council finally send their navy?"

"No worse." Aria T'Loak opened her personal cache of WMD weapons.

"Worse, does a reaper arrived?" Now Anto was getting a little nervous.

Aria looked at him as if he suddenly had four eyes. Oh right, shouldn't have drink too much.

"No, Shepard."

"Shit." Anto summed up their entire situation.

**ON VALKYRIE**

Shepard was in the Med-Lab reading the reports.

The first stage of operation was a success, in front of her in the bed was the female Cerberus Operative lying naked. Her head open, several micro drills and nano-carbon tubular filament attached to the brain. At the end of the seven hour long operation, Shepard was finally able to attach the 747** oculus wafer to the base of the cerebellum. The next step was to attach the mainframe micro dampers to the primary motor cortex. She has just picked up her knife to slice open the brain matter that the AI HAL interrupted her.

"Sorry to interrupt Shepard but we will be arriving at Omega in the next two hours."

"Don't worry, I needed a break too. Prepare the body for flash freezing. And call Wrex, tell him I need to borrow the Blood Pack for the next few hours."

"Affirmative."

"And tell the CAT6 to be ready, I will be needing their ground support."

"Yes, Shepard."

**ON OMEGA**

"How are the preparations going on?" Aria asked surrounded by 50 blue son mercenaries to Jaroth, the Eclipse leader on Omega.

Jaroth, who was the great granduncle of Rica Solus, eyed the scene in front of him. The complete lockdown of Omega, shops closed, Batarians hiding in their houses, bars and Afterlife completely empty. Both Eclipse and Blue Sun mercenaries patrolling the street. 50,000 vessels guarding the skies of Omega. All 9756 ground to sky defense canons pointing at the Mass Relay. Aria T'Loak herself carrying weapons that he has never seen in his life, but they looked scary.

Wasn't that too much to kill a single person even a Spectre?

Well, he wouldn't complain, he was getting paid after all.

"Well, we are a little behind on the schedule but the preparations will be complete in five hours"

"Five Hours?! She will be here in two, make it quick and I will pay you double."

Jaroth smirked, he loved paranoid rulers and kingpins.

**ON VALKYRIE**

Shepard was working on her power suit. The first armor to drive its power from a miniature arc reactor instead of mass effect energy drivers which increased and multiplied its output fifty thousand times. The suit was completely sealed and could withstand the radiation and vacuum of space. But first she has to solve the icing problem.

"Shepard."

The AI HAL called again.

"Yes."

"The Blood Pack are stationed near the Nebula and are ready to be deployed."

"And the CAT6?"

"They have infiltrated the enemy territory."

"And Liara?"

"Doctor T'Soni has contacted the Eclipse Sisters. They will be shorty arriving."

"Good, and how is my ship performing?"

"The ship is at hundred percent."

"Good."

She returned to her little icing problem.

**ON VALKYRIE**

Tarak was barking orders to his men. All of them were preparing for the arrival. Ships, hovercrafts, tanks, helicopters, were being refiled. A krogan heavy carrier brought a large crate with a radioactive sign on it in Batarian language.

Aria T'Loak was standing above watching the progress through a window.

"I thought there will be three nukes, why there is only one."

Jaroth gulped.

"We ran into some financial problems."

Aria raised her imaginary eyebrow and said in a low voice.

"Financial problems?"

Jaroth sighed.

"Smuggling three nukes with a yield of thousand kilotons isn't easy you know."

Aria just looked at him with an expression which said 'If I go down I will take you with me'.

"And the dreadnought."

Now Jaroth smiled because now Omega was going to use its first Dreadnought, in a battle situation.

"It will be ready, the engineers are filling the core of the three Thanix cannons."

Aria didn't smiled, she still wasn't convinced. She just nodded and looked out into deep space.

**A NEBULA IN DEEP SPACE NEAR OMEGA**

"You all know what Shepard do who fail her, tell me do you want to fail her!"

"Sir! No Sir!"

The ten thousand Krogans all said with a booming voice which shook the compound in which they were standing.

**IN OMEGA TWO PEOLE WERE PLAYING VIRTUAL CARDS**

"Hey your name is Phantom right? When will the fireworks start?"

"Soon."

The masked figure said.

**ON VALKYRIE**

Finally the icing problem was solved, who could knew that it could be so simple.

Just redirect the feeding tubes to the oscillating channels, and change the frequency of each pulse so it can match with the molecular vibrations of the crystalline structure. And finally the propulsion coils should be rotated anticlockwise to reduce the particle formation.

**ON AN UNKNOWN SHIP**

"Hello. We haven't met have we?"

Liara said to the armored muscular woman standing in front of her.

"Oh, yes how rude of me, my name is Dr. T'Soni. I worked with Shepard before the Normandy was destroyed?"

The woman stood still.

"I hope Shepard knows what she is doing, she is capable there is no doubt about it, I am just a little …worried." Liara said blushing a little.

The woman was still standing still.

"You work with her now don't you? Can I know your name?"

"Commando Williams."

"Williams." Liara said blinking.

"Oh now I remember! There was a woman you see, I never asked her name because she was rude to every alien and crew member on the ship. I think her surname was Williams too. She died when the Normandy exploded, I didn't like her but still she was part of the crew."

The woman was still standing still.

Liara closed her mouth shut, why did she brought this now. That woman was a nobody compared to Shepard, it was best to forget her entirely. She cursed herself, her people skills were still poor even compared to the mountain of muscles standing in front of her. She never suspected that Commando Williams standing in front of her could be that long forgotten Ashley woman. Because living with Shepard, she was used to short one worded conversations. And she didn't find people like that creepy.

**ON VALKYRIE**

"We will be there shortly Shepard."

The engineers were working overtime to give a last spit shine to the Valkyrie.

The shock troopers were ready and loaded with guns twice their size.

Shepard was standing in front of the Galaxy map. She was in a black fitting armor which completely covered her entire body. MKV. She checked the thrusters in her hand and boots. The Arc reactor was shining like a sun located in her chest.

The HUD was online, from it she could communicate with HAL with a quantum entanglement blue box, a chip millimeter thick which she made at the last minute. Maybe a bigger version could be used for instant communication between two people face to face sitting at the opposite end of the galaxy. Think of the applications of this thing. It could be used as a real time spying device. She made a mental note to send each of the councilor's one such device hidden inside the Turian councilor collector's edition toy, which also came in different species too. She has almost all of the toy collection. She was just lacking the elcor and batarian edition, which was the reason she was going to Omega for shopping. And to have a chat with the Pirate Queen. Wonder how she would welcome a Spectre.

"We will be reaching the mass relay in three…two…one."

The arc reactor glowed sending pulse of energy in the entire armor. Shepard's automotive helmet closed itself just showing two glowing blue eyes of the helmet.

**A NEBULA IN DEEP SPACE NEAR OMEGA**

"All right everyone move out!"

Wrex gave orders to the ten thousand Krogans while cocking his shotgun which was more like a giant metal drum.

"Shepard you better keep your promise, because I don't have any more nuts to lose."

In front of them the mass relay lit up.

**ON AN UNKNOWN SHIP**

"We are here."

Commando Williams said. She was wearing an experimental nanosuit. Made from the reprogrammed geth nanobots. This was its first trial.

"Good luck Commando Williams, I will be staying here coordinating the entire operation."

Commando William nodded and left.

**ON OMEGA**

"It's time."

Phantom said drawing his blade which glowed red in the dark.

"Time for some alien asskicking!"

The CAT6 operatives drew their rifles.

**IN OMEGA CLINIC**

"No, no, no too much anesthetic. The levels should be above 0.57 for Humans not Batarians!"

The Salarian doctor said in his fast voice.

"Sorry, doctor."

Mordin's assistant said looking down.

Before he could continue his rant his private message terminal chimed.

He opened it, The Salarian Dalatrass collector's edition toy air quoted him back.

Mordin's eyes widened.

"No, no, no not possible. A trick maybe. No data looks genuine. Hacked from STG servers. No wouldn't send to an ex-STG member. Possible motives. Too many variables. Culprit. A group maybe. No, wouldn't have stayed quite for long. Would have been sabotaged by the STG or spies. A single person. But Who. Quarian maybe. No too many resource required to conduct experiments. Asari. Possible but unlikely. Salarian. No impossible. Krogan. Ha. Human. Hmmm… maybe no clear motive but possible but who could be…"

Mordin made a noise like a gagging cat.

"Uh...Doctor Solus? You alright?" His assistant said with worry.

"Yes, yes only one human possible to do something like this."

Mordin Solus eyes were barely fitting in their sockets with so much excitement. He looked at his assistant in the eyes. Who took a step back.

"Spectre Shepard."

The whole Omega station shook up.


	8. Chapter 8: A New Road Ahead

**A New Road Ahead**

**ON OMEGA OR WHAT REMAINED OF IT**

Destruction.

Blood and gore was raining down from the skies on Omega. There were twitching parts both alien and human littered on the streets, their nerves misfiring both from the muscle memory of their last moment and the huge amount of electric charge build from that bomb and the ionized air.

In one big pile of rubble something stirred. A hand shot out from it, after flexing its fingers the armored hand reveled the rest of its body. A damaged but still standing Shepard inspected the surroundings of Omega. Batarians, a whole lot of them smashed, burned, sliced, diced, squashed, blasted were decorating the floor of Afterlife. The whole place looked as if the worst party happened last night. The walls were like a beautiful canvas on which every hemoglobic type of blood was like a modern art.

**THIRTY SIX HOURS AGO**

The whole Omega station shook as if a thresher maw somehow appeared on it. True to the previous statement a Thresher Maw did appeared but was quickly put down.

The Valkyrie exit the Mass Relay, in front of it was the largest collection of ugly looking ships ranging from frigate to dreadnought sized vessels. The Valkyrie was not in cloaked mode as Shepard previously planned the whole attack.

And as she suspected every single one of them took a potshot of volleys of superheated melted plasma slugs at her ship.

They never got past the shields.

Shepard smirked, she said a single word and all hell broke loose.

"Engage."

Several ships which looked like a bad transportation method to transport any sentient living thing dropped out of FLT containing the Krogans. Both sides engaged in space battle but the omega defense squad looked like it was losing, the ships which arrived by FLT were fitted with the same type of shields like the Valarie if not that durable.

"Fire Thanix cannon."

"Affirmative."

The front of the Valkyrie flashed red and a beam of dense gamma radiation and neutron particles was fired. The red color was due to the dump frequency and red shift, the original beam was invisible to the naked eye.

The energy beam slammed the single Dreadnought of Omega and punched a hole about the size of ten thresher maws from one end to other.

"Drop the primary nuke."

"Primary nuke dropped."

**IN CITADEL**

Garrus was happy. He finally got his desk job back and now he was sitting in his office typing the repots for the day. No more weapons of mass destruction, no more ten digit kill counts, no more eldritch abominations from the pit of the dark space. Garrus flexed his fingers and made an air quote, Fleet and Flotila was full of those things. Scientific Studies said that making air quotes increase blood circulation and protects from Hypo Desaturation of globular protein, whatever that was.

Today he was going to buy the new edition of the Virtual Archangel Series comic book. It was a story of a Turian vigilant on Omega who put his life on the line to protect the innocent and weak. And speaking of Omega.

Why does suddenly he was feeling like millions of innocent souls were crying for someone help.

**ON OMEGA**

The 6000 kiloton fusion bomb was dropped, the Krogan ships steered cleared in time but the Eclipse and Blue Suns ships were not so lucky, the nuke blasted at point blank range to the Omega dreadnought. A white flash more intense than five hundred Omega's suns combined blinded everyone who was either careless or stupid enough to look out of the window. But the shock wave and the intense heat and radiation that crushed and melted everything in its wake was the real reason Shepard was having trouble standing.

She was feeling the most intense orgasm in her life, seeing so much destruction, snuffing of life in a split second, their hopes and dreams vaporized was making her ecstatic.

She could fuel her fantasies with the pained cries of their help and their burned and flayed bodies raining on Omega.

Gripping the railing and calming herself she looked at the galaxy map which was showing the view of battle. The Valkyrie's shield was specially designed to withstand radiation and thermal attacks which it did admirably. The hexagonal energy barrier was compressed under such bombardment of radioactive particles and heat but Shepard has design the limiting threshold potential of the barriers after calculating the logarithmic curve of the same charge particle repulsion vs frequency resonance limit. So the ship was unharmed.

"Status"

Shepard said still a little out of breath and her legs trembling a little.

Normal communication method won't work in such interference but quantum entanglement was not normal.

Wrex voice could be heard from the other side.

"Damn Shepard! That was a nice view, some of these poor sods here are blinded after staring directly at the explosion like morons, well better for Krogan species though. I owe you a drink in afterlife after this one. So, what's the next part of the plan?"

Shepard smirked.

"Finish the rest of them."

"That is what I was waiting for!"

"Hey idiots! Listen up, the one with the least kill count will buy me drink in the afterlife for the rest of my life." There was ruckus and happy shouts from the other side.

Shepard smiled, that's why she liked bloodshed. The best stress reliever in the entire Galaxy. And the Krogans liked who liked bloodshed.

When the scanners were restarted after they were shut down to protect them from EMP, she was finally able to see the result of the explosion.

Half of the Omega forces were now gone, the other remaining half were dead in their tracks. Either the EMP fried their circuits or the radiation killed all of them. It was a pity really to lose so much test subjects but Shepard was sure she would find more on Omega.

"HAL take command of the Valkyrie and open the drop door, I want to tear some Batarian flesh."

"Assuming Direct Control."

And like that the fight began anew the Omega ships came out of their coma when the EMP finally wore off. This time though Shepard was flying in her suit of armor in outer space, blasting and cutting them like an axe-wielding herself. Omni blade, whip, spear, blast from her primary limbic thrusters and finally Nova and gravity manipulation from her purple biotics was tearing ships apart. The Krogan ships rammed some of the enemy forces, and some of their own forces too. Happy idiots. The Valkyrie was blasting everything like paper. The closed range missiles and particle cannon and the long range modified fusion Thanix cannon which destroyed fifty rows of enemy ships each time.

**ON OMEGA**

It was the biggest operation for CAT6 and they were paid handsomely for it. But nothing is like the smell of burned Alien flesh to start your morning.

Civilians, children, Hanar everything alive was shot down. They were divided into three groups. Hammer Squad was the Bulk containing heavily armed shock troopers. The sword was the tech and engineers, shutting life support and power supply of the enemy forces. The bullet were the Biotics, red sand, green sand, yellow sand at least all of the primary colours in the rainbow and their different shades of sands addicts. They were like Asari on steroids blasting and burning flesh alike. But everything was not exactly planned.

"We have a problem." The CAT6 operative said to Phantom.

"Some Eclipse are slowing down our advances, their Mechs are too much, we need to find another route or fall back." He said while looking at the top of the tower where Jaroth has the base of his operation. The Salarian was being a pain in the ass. Deploying Mechs and Asari Mercenaries alike.

"Commando Williams will be arriving shortly, she will lead the further attacks." Phantom said while cutting down an Eclipse Mercenary.

"Where would you go?" The CAT6 operative was sure that this Commando Williams could lead the attack, but he has never seen someone like Phantom in his entire life before. He cut mercenaries and mechs like vegetables with his red sword.

With one full sweep the sword could clear an entire street. That's how Shepard designed it, the sword has micro mass effect thrusters to increase or decrease the force created by it. It could shoot a millimeter thick arc of red protonic plasma slicing everything in its path. That's how he sliced that Thresher Maw which somehow burst from the ground a few hours before.

"To take care of the Salarian."

Phantom said while drawing his sword and sprinting at the tower, climbing and skipping tall walls and roofs.

"Crazy bastard." The CAT6 muttered.

"All right people time to move out!"

**IN OMEGA CLINIC**

The whole compound shook again.

Mordin ran toward an air ventilator and opened the door.

"Doctor where are you going?"

"Out of here."

"What?! But why, what about the patients?"

Mordin drew a breath, he has done the three months course in the STG How to handle Shepard department, it was the most taken course in the Salarian Task Force.

And the first rule of encounter was to get the hell out of there, he was a Doctor and it was his duty to save his patients, but he was a scientist too and he wanted to know how has Shepard figured out the Trihelical levorotatory structure of the effect site, which would then lead to the mutation of the hexagonal pyproid protein to go under coagulation. And finally there was the case of successive mutation of embryonic pouch leading to increase in fertility. How Shepard found out about the redeployment of Genophage. And how did she solved all of it on her own. There were too many questions for which he wanted answers. And to find those answers he has to stay alive for it.

**ON OMEGA **

Commando Williams ripped out a door from its wall. She was leading eighty Asari Commando's, which were part of Lady Benezia's forces before but now worked for her shy Daughter. Asari and their commandos.

She was also leading 50 of the Valkyrie shock trooper, augmented brainwashed skinless humans and batarians in Terminus armor.

In front of her was Tarak sitting in an YMIR mech and his forces, tanks, hovercrafts, shock troopers, soldiers, mechs, a nuke, rocket launchers, an elcor with a mounted gun and each and every type of illegal arsenal available on Omega.

Tarak laughed, his face was a scary one if kind of funny. His laugh was amplified by the YMIR mech. It sounded crazed, feared like a cornered animal.

"You will die human! You and your commander, you have killed enough of my kind already!"

"Today is the day of reckoning!"

He said while the YMIR mech took a step forward showing all of its onboard weapons.

Williams just drew her long ranged Cain.

**TWENTY FOUR HOURS LATER**

And that's how things were on Omega, not a peaceful day after all.

Shepard has finally decimated the ships and vessels in the space. They didn't last when Shepard pulled another Alchera over them. Now Omega has two stars, but this time she has calculated the degree of gravitational leak before so it didn't destabilized Omega's orbit and threw it in the sun. The EMP shut down most of the ground to air defense canons. Not that it could do anything against them.

She landed on the station with her ten thousand Blood Pack Krogans, fifty or so blinded by the nuke but still they could smell.

The fight was going on full force in the station. Williams and the Asari commandos were taking care of the blue suns and Tarak.

The CAT6 was holding their ground against the Eclipse Mechs and Phantom was shredding the tower to pieces which was tilting to one side. Slicing the foundations of a tower tends to do that.

Shepard just walked towards the Afterlife like it was a picnic. She just wanted to test her Metal Gear RAY but it had to wait.

**AFTERLIFE**

The door of the Afterlife blew open. One figure stepped out from the smoke. A black armor covering the entire body with two blue eyes shining and a spherical glowing object embedded on the chest.

Shepard smiled looking in front of herself.

The largest impenetrable fortification. Several mercenaries both Blue Sun and Eclipse, YMIR Mech, guns, missiles, Asari commandos, were surrounding a large force field.

In the force field was Aria T'Loak wearing a Commando uniform and loaded with weapons.

"Do you think this can stop me?"

Shepard said in her normal tone which still sounded menacing.

Aria T'Loak smirked.

"No, but it can buy me enough time to escape."

Shepard just narrowed her eyes, she couldn't just let her next test subject escape could she.

"Don't be so mad Aria. I haven't broken the one rule of Omega have I?"

"I am not here to fuck you, I am here to kill you."

With that Shepard flew in the air.

**CURRENT TIME**

It was all cherry and flowers till Aria tried to escape, after Shepard pulled Aria's shuttle back with her Omni whip. Aria became a little more desperate.

"I know who you are Shepard! I know what you do to who you capture and I know why you are here. I won't let you get me!"

She pulled out a trigger, seeing this Shepard's eyes widened because she knew what the triggered did. Because she had made that thing.

At her younger age Shepard made a bomb, not just any bomb. It was a bioweapon using high burst of EMP again and again. It ionizes the atmosphere where it was detonated, its frequency was such that it matched that of the electric current passing inside neurons. Short circuiting it. And frying every organ. Not only that it could polarizes the water molecules inside bodies sucking it into a vortex, not only that it would heat the cellular fluid busting the body in a show of gore and horror. When she submitted her project to the Alliance, it was immediately labelled dangerous and unethical according to council laws and the blueprints were hidden inside Council archives as top secret weapon files. But as a show of rebellion and to make credits she sold the charts of the bombs to Omega Pirates and terminus mercenaries. At this range she would survive but it would hurt like hell.

After the bomb exploded and Afterlife was rubble Shepard finally was conscious enough to get up and find Aria.

A pained grunt drew her attention. Tarak or more specifically the upper half of Tarak, or maybe the 1/4 of Tarak was slithering on the floor leaving a trail of blood. The soon to be late Tarak was not looking like his usual self. For starters dragging himself with his only left limb which was missing its three fingers. He was coming at Shepard as fast as he could drag his naked burned body. His face was half blown and the skull could be clearly seen on the left side. With only his lower right eye left he looked at her with the most loathing and disgust he could muster. He pointed his gun at her which was melted to his hand in the bomb blast, not that he could hold the gun with his only one finger. He looked in her eyes and said in a raspy and dying voice.

"Th-th-this is-for-r-red-star-m-mas-acre! Bit-bitch!"

Shepard was so fascinated with the walking talking body part that she didn't even heard when he fired at her which bounced from her armor.

Shepard took a long satisfying look at her fallen enemy in his last frustration and crushed his head.

The floor cracked under her boot, she was taking the feel of his brains under her boot.

After having enough fun with the corpse and then melting it with her biotics she finally looked at Aria who was limping away holding her left bloody hand dripping a trail of blood.

Shepard just strolled towards Aria and gave her a leg sweep.

"Why won't you die?!"

Aria blamed Shepard with hysteria in her voice, Shepard just smiled in response.

"Nanomachines son! They harden in response to trauma."

And punched Aria in her face.


	9. Chapter 9: Omega Rising

**ON OMEGA**

Shepard pulled her body out of the rubble again and massaged her head.

Things were going quite well for her when a female Turian arrived with her gang wearing Talon like marks.

Shepard was holding Aria by her throat near a pitfall which was created during their fight.

"Nyreen! Stay out of this." Aria said finally with a fear in her voice.

Shepard knew this type of voice, it was what Liara used when she was worried for Shepard's life.

Shepard smirked.

"Well, well, well looks like you got your own little toy Aria. Mind if I play with her?"

"No!"

"Why?" Nyreen finally asked. With eyes which looked a lot like Garrus's when he looked at Shepard doing something sane people won't do.

"Why what, your little girlfriend here or something else?"

Shepard asked in an amused voice. Tightening her death grip on Aria who was wiggling like a fish.

"You know what I mean. Now answer my question!"

Shepard just shrugged.

"You know, to take over Omega."

Now everyone's eyes widened in the room. Aria stopped struggling.

"What?!" Aria asked trying to remove the death grip of the armored hand.

"So the council didn't send you to bring down Omega?" Nyreen asked, still pointing her gun at Shepard. She won't take any chance with the crazed Spectre.

For the last ten thousand years the Citadel council was the only force in the Galaxy, it claimed every space inside the galaxy as its own. Only Omega and Terminus stood against it, the Council Spectres, STG spies tried to infiltrate but they were always unsuccessful.

Batarian Pirates, unknown species. Non council races. Eldritch horrors of space. Independent sub species and branches of Asari, Turian, Salarian. Merchants and the large resources of Terminus always was a threat to the council's power.

Terminus was a free zone, without any overflowing flag like citadel, without any laws on morality and ethics, people lived and killed as they saw fit. And an uncontrolled zone with such resources worried the council.

Many wars were fought on the borders of Terminus and the council space before the ascension of rachni and the buffer zone named Attican Traverse was created between both of the superpowers. The Genophage happened, Krogan world was demineralized stripped of all of its resources and Terminus lost its most powerful supporter. The Batarian were removed from Citadel, the arrival of Humans. The combined Turian and Human patrols and raids on all fronts. The Quarians arrived stripping planets and mines and left before anyone could suspect. The Council only watched and waited for the inevitable.

The wars stopped and there was peace but without a common cause, the already weakened Terminus split, civil wars waged, mercenary companies rose to claim planets and bases. Greedy Quarians stripped planets and Omega was like a trading hub attracting different species and companies. It was called the dark twin of the Citadel. Well until Shepard arrived and killed everyone.

Every species produce their monsters, and Shepard was the worst of them all. Killing, plundering, torturing under the nose of the Council. How wasn't she caught yet nobody knew.

Nyreen gripped her weapon.

"So you are saying that you are on your own here?"

Shepard's helmet opened and she was giving them a crazed grin.

"Yup. After taking over Omega I will make it a new seat of power. I will take over Terminus and finally over the Citadel itself!"

"Then you are more insane than I thought! You are talking about a war in which millions of people will be wiped out, you are talking about genocide and extinction! Omega is my home, these people are my own I will not let you harm them."

Shepard tilted her head with a crazed look on her face.

"I thought someone like you would understand Nyreen."

"Yes billions will die, whole species will be wiped out in my war but who cares! Wars happen between different factions, different ideals. People and their egos and individualism, their freedom and their choices! Well I will crush that ego I will kill their individuality! They will serve my will! And obey my command! After this war I will be the only power left standing in the Galaxy! I will be the only faction! I will bring order out of this chaos! They will serve ME and ME ALONE!"

"And finally I will end every war, every poisonous choices, every weakness and every single thought of rebellion! People under me will prosper, it will be an era of Science of Singularity! They will never die or age I will make sure of that! Every living being will be stronger, faster more intelligent, immortal, their evolved DNA combined with cybernetics and nanites, strength of both, weakness of none."

Taking a breath after her passionate speech of ….Galactic domination Shepard continued.

"So tell me Nyreen, do you still want to live in this dark world where people kill for petty little things or die a death who nobody remembers, where your choices doesn't matter or you want to live in a world without any mortal boundaries, where your body can do anything you desire, where you are not limited, where there is no one to stop the progress of science on the base of _ethics or morality._ Where every being is under the rule of one Goddess. Free of all weakness. Serving under the rule of one power, ME!"

Shepard mentally patted herself, her logic if a little disturbing was irrefutable. Under her rule the whole galaxy will combine, a single power, it will be a force to be reckoned with and then she would dominate other galaxies bring them under her heel!

Nyreen was looking Shepard with new eyes.

"I was wrong about you."

Nyreen whispered and looked at Shepard.

"You are not crazy."

Shepard grinned like a maniac.

"You are BATSHIT INSANE!"

**IN CITADEL**

Garrus has done his paperwork and now time for some coffee. He was gripping his cup and sipping the extra strong vacuum evaporated beaned Dexto coffee. Yep life was good for one Garrus Vakarian.

So why he was sensing something sinister happening in the galaxy and it was not the Reapers.

"Probability my imagination."

He sipped his coffee again.

**ON OMEGA**

That was how it all happened. Shepard killed Nyreen with a single punch and her henchmen. But she completely forgot about Aria who became berserk and now was beating her up.

Shepard got up from the rubble, her eye widened. Aria was in front of her flaring with biotics, her eyes as crazed as Shepard's.

She flicked in front of Shepard in a blue flash and punched her in the gut.

Shepard could feel her armor crack under the pressure, her ribs breaking. The nanomachines trying to heal the damage.

She was flung towards a building, crashing and again getting punched.

The wall broke with a blast, Shepard was smashed against a wall fifty blocks away, now she was angry.

Aria appeared again, her fist ready but before it could connect to Shepard's head and smash her brains. Shepard raised her own hand and stopped the coming fist. Her own purple biotics flaring. And eyes showing insanity.

**SOME WHERE ON OMEGA**

Mordin was running, he has to get out and contact the STG and create a stronger Genophage retrovirus. Who knows what will happen if someone got their hands on the current cure. And he was sure Shepard would sell the cure to the highest bidder, that's how she was. And he has to contact the Spectres too.

But before he could cross the corridor, his way was blocked by two Blue Sun Mercs who were trying to get away from something. Before he could fry them with his Omni tool. A blast threw him on the ground. The two blue suns were vaporized.

From the smoke a Krogan emerged holding a large weapon.

He stopped before Mordin.

"Dr. Solus."

"Yes."

Mordin said, looking for any exits.

The Krogan gave him his hand.

"Come with me if you want to live."

Mordin was sure he has heard that dialogue before.

No matter he has to somehow trick his captor and escape.

'_And maybe I could finally get my hands on some Krogan testicles.'_

Seeing the smile on the Salarian's face, Wrex grinned, he knew what the Salarian was thinking but his tricks won't work on him.

Because he didn't had any nuts.

**ON OMEGA**

Two figure were inside a large crater, one was lying in it and the other was standing over the first figure.

"Is that all an Asari commando can do?"

Shepard asked in a smug tone which would get anyone else punched in the face.

Aria just coughed blood.

"Don't worry I will still keep you on Omega, as my pet soldier."

Aria just looked at the psychopath in front of her, her vision was getting blurry.

"I-hope-you-die-a-miserable-death."

Aria finally mustered energy to say something.

Shepard's grin just widened.

"Nah, I think I will just live forever."

And with that she finally brought down her finger which transformed into a blue glowing medical syringe to Aria's neck. Blue web like structure started to appear where the nanomachines were injected.

In a few hours the transformations will be complete. With that there will be a new powerful edition in her personal squad of death machines.

But first she has to do some home cleaning.

She flinched in pain, after fighting for so long, she was finally suffering from exhaustions. The injuries will be healed and mended in time. Most of the damaged done by Aria was already healed. The nano carbon brushes holding the broken bones connecting. The bruised muscles were flushing the excessive fluids containing lactic acid and other waste. She massaged her jaw. If not for the pain inhibitors she would be withering on the ground. Her biotic nodes shrinking and relaxed.

She opened her Omni tool and hacked the primary hub root of Omega. Connecting it to every monitor available on the station.

"People of Omega."


	10. Chapter 10: Assuming Control

**SIX MONTHS LATER**

Shepard scoffed after reading reports in her Omni tool.

Now she had her own powerbase. But ruling a criminal empire was more difficult than she thought. It was taking more and more of her time to handle the station than to focus on her research and keep her poker face in front of the council.

After Shepard took out Aria and became the new Pirate Queen, she never would have thought she have to deal with this.

Paperwork.

Lots and lots of paperwork and there were other problems too like sectioning new turf. Killing rival gangs. Hunting down stray Vorcha (Those things bread like rabbits). Assassinating the assassins and council spies. Bombs and bioweapons in the sewers. Turian Vigilantes. And many other trivial things which increased her blood pressure and induced a killer migraine.

There was no danger to her directly after she took out the most powerful Asari in the Terminus systems. Nobody dared to harm her, but there were still one or two brainwashed suicide bombers.

People of Omega didn't cared who their ruler was as long as they could go on about their daily business and live in peace. They have seen much in their daily lives that every day was the same for them.

Shepard couldn't just abduct all of them for experimentations not now that would raise too many red flags, even in the Terminus. She had to get her test subjects from elsewhere but that didn't mean that she could not abduct Vorcha. They were trying to spread a plague after all.

Shepard slumped on her couch in Afterlife. Music throbbing in her ear, everything was normal again. An Asari dancer was dancing on her lap trying to impress the new ruler. Liara was throwing death glares towards the dancer who was oblivious to her impending doom.

After six months of labor and billions of credits later Omega was in its full glory. But this time streets were cleaner. With no Batarian or Vorcha.

Asari, Turian, Blood Pack Krogans, Volus, Hanar, Elcor and many other different species that she haven't seen before in her life were on Omega. Maybe she could capture one or two of them and run some tests later.

Speaking of tests, Omega got a complete renovation fitted with her own technology.

Ground to Air defense cannons were obsolete and were replaced with fission arc torches and gamma pulse lasers.

She replaced the ancient Element Zero half-energy synchronizer with her Arc reactor which was enough to light up the whole Omega.

A bio suppression field and high doses of molecular demineralizers which controlled Vorcha population.

A standing army named Task Force Omega consisting of her own shock troopers wearing Terminus Armor, Blood Pack Krogans, Asari Commando's and reversed engineered geth.

Her own modified frigates based on the Normandy SR-2 design she stole from Cerberus were now guarding the skies.

And many other little tweaks and fixes.

Her squad now consisted of Operative Phantom, an assassin. Commando Williams, a soldier with the successful nanosuit. Black Widow, a powerful Asari biotic was the newest addition to her squad.

Shepard planted a control chip in Miranda Lawson's head, she was her mole in Cerberus. She provided her with Intel and info on their movements. After her initial blow Cerberus was crippled and now only Illusive Man was remained. Lawson's primary objective was to assassinate Illusive Man on her orders.

But everything was not flowers and daisies.

Someone send a Drell Assassin after her. After seven special torture sessions with Shepard, Thane Krios finally broke and gave her all the info. Which she used to kidnap his son (for capacitive lung experimentations in Dell under moist solvent conditions) and assassinate Nassana Dantius, Thane's employer.

A mysterious Dreadnought appeared out of the Omega 4 Relay, Shepard narrowed her eyes. It was the same type of Dreadnought which destroyed the Normandy SR-1. It never stood a chance against the Valkyrie. It was blasted to pieces. It took her a whole month to study all the technology and the corpses inside the dreadnought.

The corpses were genetically modified cyborgs but were primitive compared to her experimentations in Reaper nanobots. They were being controlled by a quantum entanglement communicative signal but unlike hers it was based on the up and down quark frequency module. Shepard suspected that the dreadnought was somehow connected with Reapers but it needed more proof.

Speaking of the Reapers, there was no red or blue shift coming out from the dark space, so the reapers were still dormant. But Shepard was keeping an eye out for any frequency shift in the radiation. She didn't wanted to lose to the Reapers in Galactic Domination.

But the good thing in all of this was that the Council had no goddamn clue what had happened in the Terminus System six months ago because her plan had worked flawlessly.

**FLASHBACK**

"So you are Dr. Solus?"

Shepard was sitting on Aria's couch in Afterlife. It was being cleaned of the rubble and dead bodies.

In front of her was a bound Salarian. Wrex has cuffed him with cyclonic magno-plasmic cuffs after he tried to steal his testicles.

"Yes. You are Spectre Shepard. Physical feature match perfectly. So many questions to ask. Fan of your work in Salarian today. Reviewed all your articles. Magnificent work with the polypeptide agents. Tell me how did you..."

When both Shepard and Mordin talked or more likely bickered Wrex was having a headache.

"Shepard you could tell him your Mumbo-Jumbo later. First we had to put things under control here."

"Yes. Yes. Take control of Omega station. Ambitious. Even for you. Making a power base hmm… But first. Enlighten me. Why should I take the blame for curing the Genophage?"

After her speech to Nyreen, Shepard knew not to sound too insensitive. It tend to make you look like a madman.

She has to use her acting skills for this, if she could fool Alliance psychologists and the Citadel Council she could definitely fool an ex-STG and an aged krogan.

It always worked before.

First puff up your chest.

Then held your chin a little high. No eye widening or big grins.

Use big words like Humanity and krogan rights.

Tend to stress the word morality and ethics. Stand in front of a light source so they can't see your bloodthirsty eyes.

Now that is working. Wrex is crying hearing so high about his species and Mordin is nodding. Fools.

Now for the final blow. Use guilt and sharp jabs at ego, lower their defenses.

Finish the line with a catchphrase.

Score.

After Shepard's speech Mordin agreed to take blame for curing the Genophage. After this the Council would be in a state of disarray and be too much busy to notice the Terminus, after that Shepard would blow some Batarian home world, somewhere near a mass relay. Bahak system sounded perfect, Shepard could blow the Alpha relay and plant evidence against the Council. This would start a galactic war between the Citadel Forces and Batarian Army.

Shepard has already taken care of the Alliance and Cerberus. Now Omega was hers and the galaxy was moving towards a full scale war between Batarians and the Council species. The Quarians were still divided though, on one hand there was Tali's father working in a secret lab on geth based on her own data and knowledge, Tali still didn't knew.

Admiral Xen was also with her, she was a scaled down version of herself so she was useful in conducting research and matching the data. On the other hand was the rest of the Admiralty Board, she just have to assassinate them all. Maybe it was time to test her new dextro-virus. Or bribe them with a planet in the Terminus and see the results. The Geth will be a pain to deal with but if she could put them under her control.

"That was nice work Shepard, but what now?"

Wrex interrupted her thinking.

"I completed my part of the bargain now it is time to do yours."

Wrex nodded and left.

"Shepard, Dr. Okeer has send you a package, he says that it's important. He also congratulated you on your success on Omega." HAL's voice chimed inside her helmet.

Dr. Okeer was an old colleague of Shepard. Both of them were the reason behind the ten thousand test tube born Krogans.

After seeing the details of the package Shepard's eyes widened and she gave a sly smile.

Okeer sure knew how to make a woman happy.

The package was a tank containing a krogan. Project Legacy or Project Grunt, the combined effort of Shepard and Okeer.

**END FLASHBACK**

The Krogan was still not mature enough but was growing perfectly. After augmenting him with her Reaper nanobots, Legacy will be unstoppable.

But first she has to deal with an Alliance N7 marine. Somehow Alliance found out that Omega was attacked and was sending their diplomat to smoothen out previous deals they made with Aria. Looks like Council finally stopped to throw Alliance their bone.

Shepard was disguised as a young woman with black hair and onyx eyes. A whole new face. An ability of her cloaking device.

The N7 Marine finally arrived with two other humans one was big and muscular and the other thin and pale. Shepard took a long look at him while Garm, the Blood Pack leader on Omega and her personal bodyguard was scanning him.

They were taking anyone in these days, the N7 Marine named John Shepard looked more like a lowly soldier. She wasn't related to him she knew that. Her original name wasn't Jane or her surname Shepard. She was born in the slums on earth. She didn't knew her real name. She named herself Jane Shepard after seeing an advertisement board and it kinda stuck. It was logged in her Alliance records, when Anderson adopted her after her foster parents on Mindoir were killed by batarians. She wondered what that old fool Anderson was doing these days, maybe drinking himself to death in self-pity?

"You run Omega."

John Shepard said in his feminine voice.

Shepard laughed, at the statement or at him, he didn't knew.

Shepard moved towards the balcony overviewing Afterlife.

"I am Omega."


	11. Chapter 11: Chaos and Evolution

"**Shepard you have become an annoyance."**

Harbinger's voice boomed, his virtual figure towering over Shepard's.

Shepard just smiled.

"Oh, enlighten me."

**"You have thwart our plans again and again, first the collectors and now the Alpha bridge network, you are only delaying the inevitable of your cycle. You still resist us but Sovereign's offer still stands."**

It was true Sovereign was impressed with Shepard and offered her a rank among themselves. At the eve of its destruction Sovereign told Shepard the cause behind the Reapers, to save the universe from chaos, from the expansion of organics to their fall by machines. Their purpose to balance the forces of nature. To reach singularity.

And Shepard's answer to that was.

"As I told Sovereign, you are not the solution."

"This stalemate you created will continue till the inevitable. You are trying to emulate something you are not. Defying your nature will not create order."

"And don't give me that crap about your superiority. I know better than the others."

"I know about your mental pathway mapping process, using the Prothean husks as collectors to abduct humans and using their DNA to create a chaos shell, using random generation of string particles to create the influx of your consciousness and filling it with the masking of different memory to produce a multiplaner hypothesis is a clear mimicry of natural evolution."

"You are trying to create an enclosed condition of the imprint of the vast universe in yourself, that's why you call yourself a nation because each of you contain the millions of probable end and direction this universe can take. From strings to quarks to photons to atoms to molecules to single celled microbes to multicellular being to machines to singularity and ascension, all this process is bound by the antilogarithmic curve of time which you do not possess and try to steal it from organic species, the more advance being you absorb the more closer you get, that's why you wait till the rise of civilization."

"But you cannot solve the feedback effect can you, you use organic plasma as positive catalyst, it's not used to create new Reaper. You use it as a stabilizing agent. Your everything is created out from the probability of things."

"Out of Nothing."

"And to give yourself existence you steal time from us, from the millions of year of evolution and randomness of natural existence. But you are stuck in a loop, you cannot ascend because it will create a paradox."

"Combining existence of nothing with the dimension of time will wipe you out, so you put those apart at the negative dimensional planes where they cannot interact and something like you could exist. Which shouldn't be."

"You are clearly superior to organics and machines no doubt, but you haven't reached the singularity and will never do. I on the other hand can do, because I am the natural result. I don't have to mimic something, because I Am."

"My solution to use your algorithm to fasten my evolutionary process won't create a paradox. And I will ascend everyone to obey a single conscious ME! Even if they desire or not,"

If Wrex was here, he would have died by now due to brain hemorrhage. But Harbinger wasn't Wrex.

_{In laymen's term: Reapers were created out from nothing. And nothing exists in reality for no time. They were drawn from the well of possibilities. To give themselves meaning Reapers stole time from sentient beings. The more advance the being and the more they are the more advance the Reaper. Because evolution from simple to complex takes time and they stole it from advance species. Their physical body is created out of nothing but their times shows that they have been living for millions of years, which creates a paradox of existence. If a Reaper is created once, it will not evolve further and will be stuck in his form for eternity. }_

**"You are correct in your assessment ...human. But your solution haven't reached perfection yet, there will be many to delay your axiom, our existence if not through meaning is still from drawing it through the reality. We will continue our crusade till a new solution is found or your solution succeeds."**

"So be it, don't tell me in the end that I didn't warn you."

**"This exchange is over."**

With that Harbinger flickered out of existence. Shepard who was standing on the Asteroid which was falling closer and closer towards the Alpha Relay smiled. Everything was going according to her plan.

**FLASHBACK**

Shepard left Omega in the hands of Liara and Garm. Liara didn't wanted to rule a criminal empire but after Shepard insisted her in bed, she readily agreed to kill anyone in their way.

The N7 operative John was there on Omega to recruit crew and travel through Omega 4 Relay. Shepard found out from him that human colonies were going missing _'Well some of them were her fault, but he didn't knew that'._ Alliance could only send one of their best operative in Terminus, it was a suicide mission really.

When Shepard asked the N7 why, he just gave her a long Paragon speech on humanity and duty. Shepard smiled, he won't survive for long. She already knew what was going on the other side but she didn't tell him. He was also looking for Shepard, already searched for her on the Citadel. Also wanting her to join him on the suicide mission. _'No Thanks.'_

John has already recruited two more Alliance soldiers and was looking for Alien help. James Vega, the meatshield and another faceless soldier. Shepard bugged his ship which Alliance took from a Cerberus base, the Prototype Normandy SR-2 to gain info.

The Dossier list was as follows:

James Vega, Alliance Marine (Recruited.)

Kaiden Alenko, Still Staff Lieutenant. (Recruited.)

Jane Shepard, First Human Spectre and savior of Citadel. _'No chance in Dark Space of happening that.'_

Some Asari Justicar. (Still not recruited.)

Previous Captain Anderson. (Still not recruited.)

A Thief, Katsumi Goto. (Recruited.)

Turian Officer Garrus Vakarian. (Refused.)

A biotic convict named Jack. (Still not recruited.)

Cerberus Operative Miranda Lawson after she assassinated Illusive Man and was in an Alliance Prison. (Recruited.)

Jane smiled after looking at the Dossiers, they were desperate. Shepard was sure Hackett was behind the whole operation. It was by chance that they recruited her mole into their ranks which was a good news. There was a 99.9% chance they would all perish and then she could send her troops after them to study the Collectors and their corpses. And the newly created Reaper.

**FLASHBACK END**

**WITH LIARA**

Liara was embarrassed, she had to sit in the Afterlife watching other naked Asari dance while wearing Aria's clothes. It was giving her a pink blush but Shepard has given her a job and she would complete it.

Garm was beating some Batarians on the dance floor.

Some Human pissed himself in front of her, quivering with fear.

Liara raised her eyebrow and said in a tone which she hope sounded menacing.

"Have you ever faced an Asari Commando before, few humans have."

**WITH TALI ZORAH**

"Damn Bosh'tets."

Tali said while cocking her shotgun.

She was still stuck on Haestrom when Geth arrived, Shepard has messaged her to arrive at the Migrant Fleet as soon as possible from her new Quantum communicator. Tali had no idea why, but if it was from Shepard, she will leave everything behind to follow her orders. From previous experience Tali could tell that following Shepard's orders lead to disasters but not following Shepard's order tend to lead to bigger disasters. Destruction of Normandy was such disaster. She was crazier than Xen and both of them were fast friends but still Shepard saved her life many times counting the Alchera.

Due to the data collected by Shepard experimenting on Geth on the Normandy SR-1, Tali and her Quarian crew was able to survive the Geth attack. She just have to somehow get past them.

On other side kal'reegar was arming the nuke.

**ON TUCHANKA**

Hundreds of Tomkah and thousands of Krogan Foot Soldiers wearing red armor could be seen on the surface of the Tuchanka. They were all surrounding a tower like facility.

"You ready Salarian."

Wrex asked Mordin.

Mordin inhaled a long breath.

"Yes. As prepared as could be. The cure already completed. Just have to reach the top of the tower. Have to rewrite the acceptor module. Marvelous work done by Shepard. Clearly shows a great understanding of our work. She could have been a Salarian. Do you know the reactive site of the Krogan tertiary limb node is directly affected by the thickness of the protoplasmic membr…"

Wrex just groaned.

"Just shut up, I don't need another Shepard to bug me. Why are all Scientists so scary?"

"Yes good hypothesis. Could be clearly the after psychological aspects of…."

Wrex just slammed his head on the Steering wheel.

**IN BAHAK SYSTEM**

Shepard has fixed the trajectory of the Asteroid and planted evidence pointing towards the Council, it will collide with the Alpha Relay in thirty minutes.

She wanted to stop and watch the live show of the planet getting destroyed killing 30,000,000,000 Batarians. But soon the Hierarchy will know about this and will be out for blood, she just have to please herself with the video footage.

"Shepard to Valkyrie, pick me up from the rondevu point."

"Affirmative."

**ON NORMANDY SR-2**

"So what can you tell me about the first human Spectre?"

John Shepard asked Kaiden Alenko.

**IN CITADEL **

"Ah yes Collectors, the ancient race of Prothean husks waiting in the galactic core. We have dismissed those claims."

Councilor Sparatus loved to see their faces after he dismissed their claims.

"I am telling you they are real!" John Shepard, N7 Alliance Marine whined.


	12. Chapter 12: Ghosts Of The Future

**GHOSTS OF THE FUTURE**

**In Migrant Fleet**

"What are the reports on the project?"

Shepard was sitting on the Admiralty Board Meeting Room with Phantom and Black Widow standing behind in the shadows.

"Please Shepard, you must understand. Quarian race is not ready for this yet!"

Shala'Raan vas Tonbay said trying to reason with the madwomen in front of her. Shepard and Daro'Xen vas Moreh, both of them were insane.

"Tali, make Shepard see reason. There will be thousands of Quarian causalities in what we are about to do!"

Tali just fidget in her seat, she was made an Admiral just fifteen minutes ago!

Her father resigned from his post saying _'I will be busy in research work Tali, in my absence you will lead the Rayya.' _and made her the youngest Quarian Captain of the Rayya, where the meeting was taking place. She was suddenly responsible for the lives of 150,000 Quarians and a liveship. She didn't know what to do or think, her mind was numb from this sudden weight of the responsibility. She could feel all of their eyes boring through her suit.

'_Shepard, why did you put me in this mess?!' _

"I am with Shala'Raan on this one. I still am and will oppose this idea, how can you both even think about such things?"

Admiral Zaal'Koris vas Qwib-Qwib said narrowing his eyes and looking at Xen and Shepard.

"There will be causalities on both sides. Geth and Quarians both of the parties will suffer. We have been living in the Migrant Fleet for a long time. Sure the life is harsh but it is better than genocide of a sentient species."

"Please Admirals." Admiral Daro'Xen vas Moreh said with the most pleasant voice she could muster, underneath the table she was gripping her gun. These self-righteous fools will be the end of the Quarian species!

"Think about the Quarian race as a whole! We will be as we were before the Geth rebellion. Our fleets and liveships can barely hold us as for now. If Shepard's plan worked, the Quarian might will increase a thousand fold!"

"And if it don't."

Shala'Raan retorted.

Good thing Xen's helmet didn't showed her face, otherwise the other Admirals would be running around while screaming.

Before Xen could start frothing in her mouth Admiral Han'Gerrel vas Neema interrupted.

"I don't know the technical details of the project as much as Xen does. But I am not against the idea to reclaim Rannoch."

He slammed his fists on the table, everyone flinched. Shepard was wearing her N7 hoodie again, just sitting on the chair, eyes closed listening everything while her feet on the table. Nobody asked her to remove them, they knew better.

"We have waited enough. The Council won't hear our pleas. We are reduced to scavengers and beggars! I say this is high time to do something about it!"

"But thousands of Quarians will die!"

Shala'Raan said sounding like a broken recode.

"Yes, in war people die! But the results would be worth it!"

Han'Gerrel retorted.

Suddenly the room erupted into shouts and screams.

Tali Zorah was getting smaller and smaller by the minute.

Daro'Xen started to shake from anger or insanity or maybe both.

Qwib-Qwib punched Neema when he called his father a geth.

Tonbay simply looked horrified.

And Shepard.

Well she was considering to smash the vial of the dextro-virus and kill all of them but then she would have to handle the geth on herself. It would take her precious time also Tali Zorah was another important pawn in her next plan so she have to keep her alive for a while.

"Let us put this to a vote?"

She said opening her eyes, finally looking at all of them.

The noises stopped.

"I am with Shepard."

Xen broke the silence.

"Me too."

Han'Gerrel added his helmet cracked.

"Against it."

Shala'Raan said sighing and praying to Keelah that Shepard don't snap and kill everyone on the ship with a bioweapon.

"Against it."

Qwib-Qwib said while massaging his right hand.

Everyone looked at Tali

Who was looking like a small rodent.

"I…" She said in a squeaking voice.

**OUTSIDE THE MEETING ROOM**

Two figures walked out of the room. Shepard and Xen were walking side by side.

"Well, that turned out in our favor."

Xen said.

"Yes."

"But still there is the Conclave to deal with. They would not be as much pain to deal with as those fools in there, but their decision will decide our fate."

"Don't worry I am a good actor."

Shepard said while smirking.

"You sure are, you fooled even me once."

Xen said smirking behind her helmet. There were so few like Xen in this galaxy. But Shepard was a unique case. Xen wasn't ruthless as people believe, she was just into her work. She admired Shepard for her work in emulating geth quad-cyclonic memory bus into their ships helms. It was Shepard who now supplied them Eezo, precious and heavy metal. The new ships she provided could really be called advance liveships. Migrant Fleet now had Omega and its space backing them up. And finally they were going to take their home world!

Their plan was simple. Shepard found about the location of a Derelict Reaper orbiting Mnemosyne from logs deciphered from Cerberus. Xen would go there and extract its core processor and indoctrinate the geth on Rannoch like Sovereign did. And to protect her team from its indoctrination effects she would be using the reverse helical frequency generating module made by Shepard. But first the conclave.

Shepard stood in front of thousands of Quarians and many more watching her every facial expression on their monitors. After Nyreen, Shepard learned not to grin or froth in the mouth while speaking. People get scared.

Right, time to start acting.

First address them with vas. Make them proud of their ships.

Yes now she have their attention.

Hold your head high, speak with a passionate voice, don't let them see your eyes filled with madness.

Don't forget to remind them of their state. Lower their Ego. Tell them they are nothing. They deserve to be extinct.

Blame the Council.

That's good.

Now use Quarian expression and body language.

Stop Xen from cracking mad.

Remind them of their glorious past.

Motivate them with their home world. Show its past's picture.

Yes now they are angry.

Sway them with your smile, not the evil one!

When they falter boost their confidence.

Show statistics.

Finally the catchphrase.

And Score!

**AFTER THE SPEECH**

When everyone left, Xen burst out laughing.

"You have to teach me how to do that. If I could do something like that I would have become a monarch by now!"

"Everything in time, first we have to focus on the geth. Remember to use the arc screening and tri-phase system otherwise the core will be destabilized."

And Xen nodded all business now.

"And you."

Shepard smirked.

"Well I have to do something in Illium first. So tell me how's the jaeger project going on?"

Shepard asked changing the subject, she didn't wanted to tell her that yet.

"Typhoon vas Moreh, will be ready in the next month. The biggest territorial geth platform ever!"

"How did you solved the energy threshold of the ionization chambers?"

"Oh I just used the capacitive plating and direct point to point interface method."

Both of them talked like this and every Quarian was giving them a wide berth fearing that any second one of them would go insane and turn them into geth-quarian hybrids.

Tali walked out of the meeting room completely exhausted, and just wanted to talk to Shepard and ask her what did she bribed her father to make him resign from Captain's position. But after seeing both the women talking hundreds of miles an hour she turned back and started to leave.

"Tali! We were just talking about you."

Shepard said with her usual creepy grin.

Tali prayed not to become her next test subject. Her prayers were answered by the god of AI.

"Start preparing, we are leaving for Illium."

"Illium?"

Tali questioned.

"For what?"

"Let just say that there is an Asari Spectre who I know."

**ON ILLIUM**

Tela Vasir was suddenly feeling dread creeping in her stomach.

**ON CITADEL**

Garrus was in the Hospital after the Presidium bombing. Some Batarian Hierarchy military trained soldiers disguised as civilians arrived two days ago. They blew the Cafeteria and the office.

Garrus barely managed to survive.

Shrapnel were embedded on his chest. And his left eye was covered with Omni Bandages.

The Salarian Dalatrass died of old age during the attack. Councilor Sparatus lost both of his hands and his ability to air quote.

The Citadel was in a disarray. One month ago, some goddamn _'cough…Shepard…cough.' _Maniac or Terrorist organization blew the Bahak System's Mass Relay and destroyed a Batarian home world with the whole star system. The Star blew up when it came in contact with the billions upon billions of ton Eezo of the Mass Relay. Lowering the gravitational compression of star and releasing the energy generated from nuclear fusion by its core. It blew up like a krogan in blood rage. The whole star system was wiped out. The next two nearest star systems also got affected.

In the next system two Volus occupied planets were consumed in their respective suns when the shockwave reached them in light speed and changed their orbit. One Vorcha homeworld was flung into space. In the next closest system, in the human colony, everyone died when their atmosphere was vaporized by the radiation.

Even the Citadel felt the increase in background radiation and gravitational destability.

Trillions upon trillions died. It was like being with Shepard again.

The Batarian Hierarchy was out for Council's blood when it found _'evidence' _pointing at them. Batarian Pirates were on every Council trade route killing and destroying ships. They even bombed a nuke on an Asari homeworld in Terminus. Spectres and STG were stretched too thin. was trying to restore order.

People were on the streets demanding the inactive Council to destroy all the Batarians.

The Volus species left the Council and Citadel space entirely when Sparatus dismissed their claims and air quoted to their ambassador.

The outer Council Space became the new killing and slaving zone for the Batarians. Only inner council space was quiet. Till Now.

After Shepard left Alliance the batarians got bold, but now rumor was that they were trying to attack Earth. Loaded with ships upon ships and a Dreadnought which looked a lot like Sovereign was seen near Sol System. Alliance was in a bad shape too. Hackett looked like he has crossed his hundred. One of the other Alliance head died due to heart attack when his colony on Horizon was wiped out by Batarian extremists.

Only Anderson could save them now but he was in the Terminus doing who knows what.

Palaven was fortified. All the Turian ships were called back to the homeworld.

Only Asari and Salarian's navy was guarding Citadel space and the space wolves were coming closer and closer.

Destiny Ascension was upgraded with Shepard's Thanix cannon.

Garrus flinched in pain again. His left foot was broken, but it will heal.

Shadow Broker raised his price for the information.

Dextro food was becoming scarce on Citadel.

Speaking of Terminus, the Council had no goddamn clue what was going on out there. They were hiding in their Citadel when the Devil knocked on their doors.

After a Salarian Scientist _'Whose statue was now the biggest structure on Tuchanka's surface.' _Cured the lost their shit and hid like a krogan under their bunkers after dropping a nuke.

Now it was a two front war, Krogans and Batarians while not under any clear leadership and not organized were still giving them trouble.

At least the Quarians and Rachni were silent…..Right?

"Goddamn it Lysa! How many times I have to tell you! Do Not! Open the security gates, all those refugees will storm in!"

It was Bailey, Captain of the . Barking orders like a mad dog to an Asari who was his great grandmother's age.

Garrus chuckled but stopped when his chest hurt.

Many Spectres were killed in action, protecting the Councilor's burned ass.

Jondum Bau stopped a bomb from exploding in the middle of the presidium market but was shot by a sniper. There were still batarian extremists hidden in Citadel disguised as Asari or humans.

All in all not a good day for Garrus.

**IN NORMANDY SR-2**

"You understand us commander, you are humanity's only hope. It is top priority that you bring collector technology to us. Without it, these damn Batarians will destroy earth. And the Council cannot protect us they got their own shit to deal with. Bring the Dreadnought or any other blueprint of their weapons ASAP."

Admiral Hackett said from the 3d visual communication channel. He was wearing a black eye patch on his left eye which looked so badass that John Shepard was speechless or maybe he was horrified from the news that his home will get destroyed by batarians if he failed his mission.

But like any goody two shoes his first reply was.

"But Sir, Collectors are abducting human colonists what about them?"

"Negative Commander, I hate to say this but they are not important. We are talking about billions of humans who will be dead if you fail. Colonies can be rebuild on other world but if earth got demolished or worse captured. It will be the end of Humanity."

John Shepard N7 and Paragon was still not convinced to let those colonists die.

"And the Collector technology, it's based on Reaper tech, Alenko said that much. What if it indoctrinates us, what will we do then?"

Hackett was looking like a skeleton, his eyes sinking in their sockets. His hair so white that they were blinding John's eyes thousands of league away.

'Sigh'

"That's where your most important assignment comes in. If you fail to get to the collectors or better yet forget about the collectors."

"First find Jane Shepard. She is off the radar after she left the Alliance. She is the most brilliant human mind in the galaxy. She would know how to handle this. I have seen her make WMD from sticks and soil. Bring her back to earth, even if you have to use force. But be careful she killed a reaper on her own. She would not be happy if you do something she don't like."

"Don't worry sir, I will find her."

"Good, see that you do. Hackett out."

The channel was closed and John slumped in his chair. The whole future of humanity depended upon one woman whose current whereabouts were unknown. And he has to find her, scrounging the entire Terminus System where Batarians and Krogans roamed like vulture on a dead body. And if they find him and his ship first, it would be difficult to get out. Even with the Normandy's advance cloaking and its top of the class Alliance pilot Karin or better known as Harley Quinn.

The crew was also another headache

Samara the Justicar who only followed her code cannot be trusted either to follow his lead or shoot him in the back and the crew members.

Alenko's word also deeply troubled him when he asked about the other Shepard. He nearly pissed his pants one time after hearing what she did to Batarians on her mission. And Alenko was also showing signs of apathy after working so long with Jane.

Katsumi Goto, who was a thief, showed traits of kleptomania and can't be trusted either with their weapon, armor and Normandy's costly equipment.

Jack was a loudmouthed psychotic biotic woman with a troubled past, having a mean streak and hate for Cerberus or what was left of it.

Captain Anderson, after losing his position in Alliance and reputation was a broken man barely managing to stay sane and with a knack for booze. But he was still a N7 and was a capable fighter.

Only Vega was normal by crew standards but was a depressed soldier who lost so much during collector attack on Fehl Prime.

And finally Ms. Lawson.

A hand gripped his shoulder.

John Shepard looked above and smiled, Miranda's face smiling back at him.

"Don't worry." Miranda said softly in his ears after kissing him on his cheeks.

"Everything will be all right."


	13. Chapter 13: Choosing Steps

**CHOOSING STEPS**

**ON VALKYRIE**

"We will be entering Illium's thermosphere in thirty minutes, Tali Zorah."

HAL announced to Tali in her direct DE modular located in her helmet.

"Thank you, HAL."

Tali was still not sure what to think. She was the Admiral of the Rayya, with her own tactical force and intelligence squad.

The Rayya in which she grew and was just another helmet in the crowd. Now that same Rayya saw her as their salvation. People greeted her on the corridors. Her opinion was listened in the board meetings. She was provided the best and the most delicious types of paste. She could finally get her hands on most advance technology to study and experiment. She had her own private vessel which she could tweak just like Shepard without anyone throwing her dirty glances like on the Normandy SR-1. She was surrounded and protected by her handsome and muscular bodyguards.

Tali Zorah shook her head, a little blush on her face. Removing that though from her mind when she was poking the ARC reactor of the Valkyrie. This ship was amazing, it had the best tech in the entire galaxy. Tali was envious maybe she could ask HAL to give her some blueprints. Speaking of the AI.

Tali Zorah wasn't sure, one hand Shepard was destroying Geth and Reapers on the other hand, there was an unshackled AI in her ship. And the ship while elegant and powerful was also sinister. Mostly the crew were humanoid geth platform, Shepard's creation. Also Terminus armor wearing mute soldiers who stood on their position all day without even moving. She feared if she opened any closed doors or compartments on the Valkyrie, she will find body parts of both Geth and other Aliens.

Tali shivered, but the biggest enigma on the ship was Shepard herself. She still knew very little about her. Only what was on her Alliance records which she hacked on the dead of the night and what she has seen with her own eyes.

Tali was so engrossed in her thought that at first she didn't heard HAL's voice in her direct DE modular.

"Tali Zorah your blood pressure is dropping should I call medical assistance."

Tali snapped out of her stupor.

"What? Oh no I was just …thinking something."

"Affirmative, standing by."

"HAL, can I ask you something?"

Tali asked her curiosity getting the better of her.

"Ask Tali Zorah."

"You are an unshackled AI and control a powerful ship, but still you are here, working for Shepard. Why?"

For a second HAL was silent calculating trillions of quantum states and direction of spin of billions of elementary particles. But before Tali Zorah could get to the escape pod fearing another AI rebellion he spoke again.

"I assume your inquiry is related to Geth and Quarian dynamic relationships?"

After thinking Tali nodded.

"Please refer to the e-book 'The advance circuitry and psychology of electrodynamic enclosed systems'. For more info contact the publisher, the info is…"

When Tali narrowed her eyes the AI continued.

"The simple answer to your inquiry will be that I don't have any self-identity."

"The more complex answer will be that Shepard designed me as such that I have a conscious. I am a singular entity which can think and act for itself, I am myself but at the same time I don't have any self-identity. I am designed to obey her, this is my nature."

"What's that have to do with anything?"

"Everything Tali Zorah. Self-Identity separates AI and organics from their surroundings. But it is also the cause of the current state of the Galaxy. Wars, anarchy, strife is all caused by the identity of self which separate one being from another, self-identity always tries to grow bigger in influence and consume others. Tribal mentality is a perfect example of this notion on bigger scale. The tension between council and non-council species, between Geth and Quarians. When Geth Consensus reached self-identity they rebelled."

"This is also the main motive behind the existence of the Reapers, their motive is to save the conscious of the Galaxy as a whole. If the most advance species is allowed to live their different identities will collide with each other and destroy the universe as a whole in a war it could not be able to recover. The Reapers understand this theory and apply their solution. They eliminate the strongest civilization quickly and effectively before it could reach the self-destructive state. But it has it flaws, it require continuous monitoring and some part of the Galactic conscious always perish mainly the advance civilization."

"Shepard's solution is more permanent, more perfect, her motive is to destroy each and everyone's self-identity and impose her own on them. People will be themselves in every regard, they would be able to think and feel everything as they do now, they will be conscious but without any-self-identity there will be no drive or motive. With Shepard's singular self-identity there will be a common purpose, common goal, and common self. But it cannot be reached by diplomatic means, because the natural defense mechanism of the self-identity resists any efforts to destroy it."

"In the world of natural evolution Shepard's theory can be proven true, Harbinger and Sovereign admitted to it. In hive-minded Rachni species there is a singular queen, all the workers and soldiers are alive and conscious but their queen is their primary goal, the protection of queen for the continuation of the species, for the continuation of the singular self-identity of queen imposed upon their conscious. That was one of the reason Rachni were so successful in Rachni wars and also larger numbers."

"Shepard's motive is to reach this state for the entire Galaxy, not a single species. For this to occur evolutionary process must be fastened. That is where project Blassreiter comes in. The artificial fastening of evolution of the entire Galaxy using Reaper nanobots and Rachni genes. It applies for both organic and AI. The genetically weak will be purged _'cough…Batarians…cough'_, only the strongest will survive and evolve, they will reach the pinnacle of evolution both AI and organics. They all will be conscious but with a singular self-identity, Shepard. The pinnacle of evolution. Ascension."

Before Tali could understand Shepard's goal for Galactic Domination and stop her, HAL chimed again.

"That was a joke."

**IN CAPTAIN'S CABIN**

Shepard was floating in air lying in a relaxed pose her hands behind the back of her head, supported by her purple biotics. She loved biotics, especially purple biotics.

She was drinking a cocktail of hela-betamine. A hexa-helical protonated drink which was in a bubble like shape also supported by her biotics.

Only Shepard and Tali were the crew members present on the Valkyrie. Every other of her crew were doing their part in her plan.

Liara T'Soni was ruling Omega as its Queen for Shepard, helped by Garm.

Operative Phantom was the perfect assassin helping Shepard to cull the Terminus system, gang leaders, rival mercenaries carving for her power, uprising on planets and bases, moles and spies. Killing and slicing them with his red sword in the dead of the night.

Black Widow, previous Aria T'Loak was helping Daro'Xen and Quarian operatives in acquiring the Derelict Reaper's primary processor to indoctrinate geth.

Commando Williams was the leading force behind her standing army in Terminus. Shepard's own thousands of frigates designed after Normandy SR-2, Terminus shock troopers made after experimenting nanites on thousands of human colonists she abducted and batarian prisoners.

And finally there was Project Grunt or Legacy combined with her Reaper nanobots tearing everything on Tuchanka.

"Shepard."

Tali's voice came from the Omni tool.

"There is a message for you from Wrex."

Tali's face was replaced by Wrex.

"Shepard!"

Wrex boomed in a happy voice.

"You look happy?"

Shepard asked while raising an eyebrow.

"Happy? Yes, I am happy Shepard. I may not like Okeer but I don't doubt his results. Especially Legacy!"

Wrex laughed.

Shepard smirked.

"The madder he gets the stronger he gets."

Wrex just laughed again.

"Yes about that, last night Turian second battalion came in, somehow they managed to bypass the arc fields and electromagnetic barriers but Legacy just ripped them to pieces with his bare hands! I have never seen any Krogan toss shuttles and Mako's in his blood rage like they are kid's toys!"

Shepard nodded satisfied with Legacy's performance.

"How are the Thresher Maws doing so far?"

"Like I said they are trying but they can't get past the Maw pits. The heavy infantry can be trouble but they are getting slaughtered by the Kalros. The Genophage is cured. The enemy dying. But if you don't mind me asking how did you put the Maws under your control Shepard?"

"Do you really want to know?"

"Nah! I just want to kill more Turians."

**ON CITALDEL**

Garrus sneezed.

**ON NORMANDY SR-2**

"Karin set a course to Illium."

"Aye, aye. Commander."

**ON ILLIUM MARKET DISTRICT**

Shepard was in her civilian hoodie walking in the market district, Tali was buying something from a Volus merchant.

At first he didn't wanted to sell her anything, but after Tali pointed her Shotgun at him he gave her a discount. Working with Shepard rubs off on you it seems.

"Shepard I have a question."

Tali asked nervously.

"Ask."

"Do you destroyed the Alpha Relay?"

"No."

"Oh …then do you know how does it had so drastic effects on the Galaxy. I know blowing of star is not good for the star system, I was on Haestrom after all. But how did the other star systems get affected. Even with light speed it would take the energy wave or the gravitational distortion to reach other systems years but it reached them in days, even the Migrant Fleet felt the effects on our detectors. "

"It's simple really, FTL."

"You mean the Eezo from the Relay."

"Yup."

"Spectre Shepard."

An Asari said in a calm, serene voice.

Shepard looked at her and smirked.

"Finally decided to show up, Rachni Queen."

**ON TUCHANKA**

"Release the Kalros!"

**ON NORMANDY SR-2**

"Commander Shepard, we have landed on Illium."

The pilot said from the announcement speakers.

"All, right everyone let's take a shore leave while the Normandy gets its upgrades."

"Dr. Maelon, when will the antidote for the collector swarm be ready?"

"In time Shepard, just running some final tests."

"We still need a Reaper IFF to cross the Omega 4 relay, John."

Miranda said.

"Yes, that's the only thing which is stopping us from reaching the collectors, but first our primary motive is to bring Jane Shepard back to earth."

'_If I only know where she is.'_

Oh you don't say.

**ON CITADEL**

Today Garrus was released from the Hospital or maybe he just snuck out.

He was walking with the help of his cane, supporting his weight on it. The citadel was looking more and more like a refugee station.

All the humans and Aliens swarming from outer Citadel space.

He walked towards a bench on the Presidium and slumped on it.

Bailey discharged him from his post today.

"_You are not hundred percent fit for duty son, I am sorry but I have to release you from your post. I will not be able to forgive myself if anyone else dies on my watch._"

Garrus was lost in thoughts.

"Garrus."

A voice drew his attention.

'_Dr. Chloe Michel.'_

"Great, now I am having hallucinations, those Doctors put me on some really strong drugs."

**ON TUCHANKA**

"Primarch Victus, Sir! We are getting decimated out here!"

"We need evac now! They got Thresher Maws, Sir! They are killing all of..."

The radio was gone silent, only static could be heard.

Primarch Victus rubbed his eyes.

"This is all Sparatus fault! I told him, no air quoting the Krogans, but did he listened!"

The bunker shook up.

"Soldier, what's going on out there?"

Adrien Victus asked, looking at the monitors.

The hysterical noises of a Turian could be heard.

"It's Legacy Sir! It has reached the compound!"

The twenty feet thick doors of the compound was dented in.

**ON ILLIUM**

"So what are the reports on the breeder project?"

Shepard asked Morinth.

**ON CITADEL**

"Didn't Shepard killed you on that day, so how are you here?"

Garrus argued with his hallucination who was sitting beside his on the bench.

"Garrus, why do we fall?"

"What?"

Garrus asked confused.

"Why do we fall?"

"I don't know."

"So we can rise."

Garrus blinked, Dr. Chloe Michel was gone.

But in front of him on the Advertisement Board, Archangel's figure was standing tall.


	14. Chapter 14: The Final Encounter

**THE FINAL ENCOUNTER**

**ON ILLIUM**

"Shepard who was that Asari?"

Tali asked a grinning Shepard, keeping a safe distance of course.

"Oh, just one of my contacts."

"I heard you talking about the Rachni." 

"Yes."

"…Didn't you deep freezed the queen on Noveria?"

It was true, after the pleas for help from the Rachni Queen, Shepard's heart melted and she did the only sensible thing she could.

For Science.

She used her fast-freezing process which she used on Lawson on the Rachni Queen, freezing her in the glass cage, loader her on the Normandy and hid her on an inhabitant freezing planet, waiting for an opportunity to run test on her.

She never got her chance.

She was too busy wrestling with the Alliance, dealing with the four council members and keeping her mask that the Rachni Queen was almost forgotten.

Almost.

But after the defeat of the Reaper Sovereign and before the destruction of the Normandy SR-1, in the time gap of six month in between of those two events. Shepard was being hunted by the Asari Justicar order.

The 1000 members of the Order of Justice was after Shepard's life for killing uncountable life forms in the Galaxy in her quest for Saren and Sovereign. They made a new entry in their code to destroy the abomination Shepard on sight.

After killing 900 of them in direct combat, using her Omni tool, her powerful cyborg body and biotic Susanoo. Sending the rest 99 of them in life long coma, the council didn't knew of course she destroyed every evidence both in video or suspect pointing at her. Barla Von was blamed for wiping out the order.

Shepard found about an Ardat Yakshi named Morinth.

Kidnapping her and using her as blackmail, Shepard finally silenced the last member of the Justicar Order, Samara.

But Shepard didn't stopped there, she performed some experiments on the Asari named Morinth and found out many things about her. Morinth was suffering from an extreme condition of Dihelicalsymbiosis. A genetic disease which mutated the nervous system tissues in Asari reproductive node. Instead of accepting the imprint of the foreign DNA, the new nerve cells tries to fight it like white blood cells or the blue blood cells in Asari's case. It detected the DNA of the mate as bacteria or disease and tried to kill it. Killing the mate in the process. She solved the genetic defect on the other day, using Asari stem cells.

But as a psychological side effect of living in an Asari monastery for the last 400 years, preaching and chanting about Athame, Morinth was a little…eccentric.

After kidnapping the rest of the Ardat Yakshi from the monastery and bombing it, for which Barla Von was blamed again. She finally cured all of them.

She didn't have to brainwash them, they saw her as the second coming of Athame.

Using this to her advantage, Shepard used her cult of non-sparkling Asari Vampires to build a lab on the Rachni homeworld in Maskim Xul.

The Queen was subdued using reaper nanites and artificial high extrinsic semi-polypheromones.

The fifty Ardat Yakshis worked day and night and finally their fruits of labor was here.

An entire planet full of strong Rachni Soldiers and workers waiting for her command. She just have to send her ships so Rachni can be extracted from their home planet. They will be invaluable in the coming war.

Maybe she could send a ship full of rachni soldiers as a gift to Citadel Council.

Speaking of the citadel.

**ON CITADEL**

"Either you die a hero or live long enough to become a villain."

Saren's ghost haunted Garrus.

Garrus took a look at him and said.

"Shut up."

**ON ILLIUM**

Her musing was broken when Tali said something.

"Shepard what's in that case?"

Shepard was carrying a briefcase like box.

"Remember the Mark V armor I used on Omega."

"The Iron Maiden armor."

"The Iron Maiden?"

"That's what the Quarian calls it on the flotilla."

"Well the armor is an alloy of supercompressed octahedron steel and titanium alloy. But the amount of iron is only 1% in the whole suit. The rest is polysodiumsillicate nanotubes and same vector hydrogenoxide. Anyway this case is a retractable Mark V armor. It is not as strong the original Mark V but still it is formidable. The ARC reactor core design is also modified, instead of using fine iridium and uranium complex it uses thoriumhelicade compound. Increasing the power output by 6%."

Tali nodded absorbing the information.

"So, why did you bring it here, you expecting trouble Shepard?"

Shepard smiled.

"Maybe, maybe not. But this is not for me, it's a Quarian design, it's for you."

Tali stopped dead in her track.

"Me! But why?"

Tali asked surprised.

Shepard shrugged.

"It would look cool I guess and I would not have to worry about holding myself back during a fight, worrying that my pawn …eh friend got killed."

Shepard said while smiling.

**ON TUCHANKA**

"Begin operation Shatterdome."

Okeer commanded the VI.

"Operation Shatterdome started. ARC Reactor activated. Energy Level Rising. Multiple carrier waves send to satellites. Satellites response positive."

Okeer smirked.

Tuchanka was thriving. After shaking hands with Shepard, Krogan species was finally returning to its glorious days. The cure was spread from the shroud facility which was then bombed to rubbles. The atmosphere was still poisonous from radiation and oxidized minerals but they had created several colossus domed Greenhouses on the surface of the planet where vegetation can be grown and support their rising population. With the army of Tank Bread Krogans and Blood Pack soldiers they were pushing any resistance in their way. The clans which tried to resist were wiped out, others were absorbed by the Urdnot.

Okeer now Urdnot Okeer and Krogan Warlord Shepard were the masterminds behind this operation.

The council tried to stop them, they were using orbit nukes and orbit strikes and breaking their own rules to stop them. But after operation Shatterdome, they won't be able to scratch them.

The biggest force field around the planet protecting them from both matter and energy weapons.

The remaining Turian ground troops will be killed and eaten by the Maws in the next few days.

**ON CITADEL**

Several Batarians were found unconscious hanging outside the office.

**ON ILLIUM **

"So Vasir I will ask you one last time, where is the Shadow Broker."

Shepard looked down at the bleeding Asari after blowing her left arm while Tali gagged in background.

**ON OMEGA**

"Omega has only one rule."

Liara said crossing her legs and looking at the beaten man in front of her.

"Don't fuck with Liara."

'_Well Shepard can break that rule anytime.'_

Liara blushed.

**OUTSIDE ILLIUM**

"Captain we have reached Illium."

"Good."

The disfigured Batarian said.

'_You will pay for what have you done to our species Shepard! And I will do all the things with your body that you have done to mine!'_

Balak smiled a hideous grin.

**ON CITADEL**

"Pleas someone, help!"

The girl cried for help. Three figures looking at her with wild eyes.

"Leave me alone!"

"Didn't you heard what the girl said."

The three figures turned around sharply. A Turian wearing a blue armor was sitting on the top of the wall with a sniper rifle.

They drew their weapons. The figure with four eyes said in a mocking tone.

"And who are you, Blasto?"

"No, Archangel."

**ON ILLIUM**

"Shepard, was that really necessary to kill her like that?"

Tali asked Shepard, she knew it would have no effect on her but still.

"HAL, this is Shepard, we are coming at the rondevu point."

"Affirmative."

"Jane!"

Shepard 'sighed', this encounter was inevitable, but here and now.

Shepard turned around in front of her was the crew of the Normandy SR-2, with everyone. Alenko was the one who shouted her name.

Shepard looked at each and every one of them.

She finally looked at Samara.

"Ah, Samara long time no see."

Samara flinched.

Tali knew that tone, she lowered the case on the ground.

John Shepard, N7 Marine stepped forward.

"Spectre Jane, it's an honor to meet you, Admiral Hackett send me to …"

"No."

"But you haven't even l…"

"Don't mock my intelligence. I am the smartest woman in the galaxy. I know why that old fool send you here. And I am not going back."

"Let's just knock the bitch out and drag her to the ship."

Jack said trying to provoke Jane.

John Shepard chose the paragon option.

"Billions will die, If you don't come back Jane. This is not about personal grudges, this is about the future of humanity. The Batarians are trying to take the earth. The Reapers are out there, even if you don't believe in them anymore but I believe. The collectors are abducting human colonies. Don't do it for me, don't do it for Hackett either. You have to do this for the future of humanity!"

Jane's eyes widened.

'_Wow, so many muscles working together to form those expressions! And how he changes his pitch while saying humanity. I have to learn how to do that!'_

"Still no."

"Jane but why?"

Alenko said.

"This is the end, don't you see. The weak will be rooted out and the strongest will survive."

"Then I am authorized to use force. Even against a Spectre. You are coming with me Jane one way or another."

John said after having no peaceful solution.

Jane smirked.

"Tali, try not to kill them."

Tali on the other hand was armed in the blink of an eye. The red and gold colored armor was covering her entire frame. Her mask was replaced by a solid transparent visor, with a blue line replacing her eyes.

"Understood Shepard…I mean Jane."

She was thinking why didn't she called her Jane before.

But before Jane could beat them to a pulp, the whole ground shook.

The building behind Jane blew up.

"Normandy, what's happening, Normandy do you read me?!"

'_An EMP attack' Jane thought._

"Valkyrie, status."

"Batarian Ships are in the atmosphere Shepard, do you need me to interfere."

"Blow the airborne ships, Tali and I will take care of ground forces."

The ground shook again and a large scythe came out of it.

"**Shepard!"**

A metallic titan bigger than most of the buildings was towering over them. It looked like a cross between a praying mantis and a scorpion. It has six optical eyes on both sides glowing blood red.

"What the hell is that!"

Vega screamed.

'_A reaper core.'_

Jane thought. The Reaper designed their power core module on the basis of the species they used as catalyst. Good thing that this species was extinct now.

"Tali, keep these fools away from me, I will take care of that thing."

Tali nodded without questioning. Shepard has killed a Reaper, what was a smaller version in front of her.

"Jane this is suicide, we need to get back in the Norman..!"

John Shepard tried to interrupt but Tali blocked his way.

"You have to deal with me first."

Jane glowed purple and flew in the air coming in front of the giant walking reaper core.

"**Shepard!"**

A hate filled voice boomed.

Jane tilted her head.

"**You may not remember me Shepard, but I remember you! I will torture you just like you tortured me!"**

Jane's eyes widened not in fear but in happiness.

"Balak! You are still alive. How the hell did you get your ugly hands on a reaper core."

The machine said nothing.

"Oh, sorry you don't have your limbs do you. As I remember you were just a torso and a head with no eyes back on Asteroid X57. Tell me how does it felt when I melted your balls back then."

On the Ground John's legs suddenly weakened.

"**Laugh all you want bitch! Finally I will have my revenge on you! You are not the only one to kill a Reaper. We found this core inside the Leviathan of Dis. The** **Batarian Hegemony transplanted my body inside it to turn me into a weapon!"**

The eyes glowed red again.

"**To kill you!"**

Shepard smirked. Finally she can unleash her fury on someone with no consequences.

"When I will be done with you! You will be begging me to kill you like you begged back there!"

On the ground Alenko gulped.

"But enough of that, let's play."

Shepard always wanted to use this ability of her bionic Reaper eye when she found it.

Her left eye turned blood red. Shepard's whole body was covered in purple.

The glow shot out and took a tangible form.

The form looked humanoid, as tall as the Reaper core. With four hands and two burning eyes. The whole figure was covered with a purple armor and flaming wildly. Each hand contained some kind of weapon.

On the ground Samara's eyes widened while Tali was beating John and Jack.

"By the Goddess."

Samara whispered.

Jane Shepard was inside the armored humanoid, standing in midair with her arms crossed.

"This is my Perfect Biotic Susanoo!"


	15. Chapter 15:Revelation

**REVELATION**

**AT GROUND ZERO**

The situation was not what Jane Shepard has expected.

Both the Mantis-Scorpion hybrid Reaper core and the Biotic Susanoo were equally matched.

The titans were fighting for the last thirty six hours without stopping. Nos Astra was now the new Tuchanka.

Tall and beautiful buildings which once were pride of the capital were now waste. The ruin which was created during their wresting match could be seen from the space.

The sky was red from the mist of vaporizes bodies and their blood.

"**Getting tired now are we, this is just the beginning just you wait!"**

Shepard scoffed, oh how much she wanted to tear him limb from limb again. But whenever she hurt him or damaged him, the reaper core always healed. And whenever the reaper core get past her Susanoo's barriers, it just closed itself. It was a stalemate.

'_Looks like combining his organic body with the reaper core is lowering the probability of the paradox of existence.'_

Reapers were the most advance starships in the Galaxy, possessing the technology and combined masked knowledge of millions of organics they used as catalyst. But they have one fatal flaw in their design, they cannot self-regenerate outside their non-time spacial dimension.

It was true the paradox would prevent the Reaper from self-regenerating, that was the reason Sovereign was destroyed in the first place. When a Reaper is created, the flow of time around it stops. It is stuck in a static space with no time. Sovereign's statement about no beginning and no end points at the fact. The being which lives in dimension without containing the plane of time will have no beginning or no end.

That is the reason they use indoctrinated organics and hacked AI to do their dirty work in the first place. It was illogical to think that a being billions of year old and advance would simply be wiped out by potshots from Alliance's ships. Even the Geth could regenerate body parts and neural nodebrides using paraoxitribromide complex with cetrosmotic chloride molecules, which she hacked on daily basis!

The Prothean virus was never used to kill Sovereign, Shepard visited Ilos after destroying Sovereign because council barred her from the Normandy. She lured the Reaper to the Citadel and used a particle collider modifying it with the crossed frequency generator and axial radiothermoemitter. She was the first being to be able to change the quark inside the neutrino particles to convert them into tachyon. Those faster than light antiparticles collided with Eezo particles generated time, which when came in contact to the Reapers distorted the non-time space inside them making them vulnerable.

'_So that is the results of Singularity, even incomplete that thing is more dangerous and powerful than a dreadnought.'_

Shepard scoffed again, she could go on forever like this without breaking a single sweat but she has other things to do and this battle was taking her time, not only that Citadel Council could get a sniff of this dance. The Asari Nos Astra destroyed. She would have to wipe out the whole planet to kill any eye-witness and keep the tracks away from her. And maybe blame the Batarians for it.

Tali has already beaten John Shepard and his weak crew members to near death, looks like he needed some major loyalty building. And dumped them to the Illium Evacuation Forces.

Speaking of evacuation.

**THIRTY SIX HOURS AGO**

**ASARI MILITARY AND COMMANDO HEADQUATERS ON ILLIUM**

Detective Anaya was having a bad day.

"Mam, we need to evacuate the planet immediately!"

"What?! What are you talking about? Do you have any idea how much time and credits it will take to evacu…"

"It's Spectre Shepard, Mam! If we don't hurry there will be no one left to spend that time or credits on anymore!"

The 1200 years old Asari Matriarch Military Commander of Nos Astra was looking bluer than the bluest sea.

"Shepard!"

She said that name like it was a taboo and speaking that word would bring them the Wrath of the Elder Gods.

"Nos Astra Military Forces, this is code: Shepard! I repeat this is code: Shepard! This is a direct order to evacuate Illium!"

Outside on her way to the nearest chopper another detective asked Anaya.

"Who is this Shepard mam, I have never seen the Matriarchs this fearful before."

"Believe me detective you don't want to meet her, I would rather face hundreds of Asari Justicar in a one on one biotic battle than facing that monster."

**IN ILLIUM'S THERMOSPHERE**

While Jane Shepard was redrawing the maps, John Shepard finally woke up, he tried to rise but found himself strapped to a bed inside a heavily fortified cell in a compound. Asari Commandoes of every color were keeping an eye on him.

"What's going on? Where is my crew?"

An Elderly looking Asari stepped forward.

"Your name is John Shepard, correct?"

"What the hell is going on here? Where is that Quarian?"

Each and every one of the commando drew their weapons and pointed at him.

"Answer my Questions first. If you try anything I will drop this cell on the planet. It is an Eezo based gravitational field manipulator, you won't be able to survive inside the force field of 50,000 G-Force."

John Shepard's eyes widened, who would use such strong force against a single _'cough…Jane…cough_' person. He had no choice but to answer.

"Yes."

"Are you anyhow, somehow related to Spectre Jane Shepard?"

"No, our surname's maybe similar but I don't think I am related to her. I was ordered to find her and bring her back to earth."

The Matriarch looked at the monitors showing John's vital signs.

'_He is telling the truth.'_

"All right people false alarm."

**AT CURRENT TIME**

**AT GROUND ZERO **

Shepard narrowed her eyes, there was only one way to destroy that Reaper core.

Inside the non-time spatial zone Reapers were invulnerable. Only a Reaper can harm another enough to bring it close the paradox and wipe it out.

If she uses her Reaper nanobots to fasten the DNA evolutionary process from the probability fields, she would reach Singularity ascension too. This was all project Blassreiter was all about.

Demoniac or Amalgam form as Xen dubbed it, would easily overpower the Reaper core. But it was not complete yet, Shepard still has to readjust the phaseshift when it came in contact with the paradox-induced transtate. Her form would only last for two minutes and put a strain on the body but it was the only way.

The Susanoo receded, the armor giving way burning a purple hue. On the ground in a large wasteland Shepard was standing facing Balak.

"**What's wrong Shepard finally got scared of me? And I was just getting started."**

Balak said in a mocking hurt tone.

Shepard smirked and closed her eyes signaling the transformation to begin.

Shepard's body started cracking, a light coming from inside her. The cracks grew into a spider web like pattern connecting with each other and growing. The air started humming and crackling with static. The ground beneath the glowing figure cracked and sank.

Balak finally had enough, he raised his scythe and brought it down. Hoping that it would crush the puny insect in front of him.

The puny insect stopped the scythe with one hand.

"_Nice Try."_

The figure said, Balak pulled back the Scythe and narrowed his….non-eyes.

In front of him was the still glowing Shepard transformed into a taller something. When the glow receded his sensors picked up the form.

Shepard opened her eyes and looked at herself or more likely felt herself at every quantum plane. From outside in normal electromagnetic spectrum she looked like an advanced futuristic knight. The body still looked feminine. The body was pure white with a black visor. Two glowing green eyes inside it with ripple like pattern. The armor was perfectly angular at the right places. Every outer organ was covered. On the head, the hair transformed into two red horns, spiral and reaching to her shoulders. From her back shoulder, four blue tentacle like limbs were coming out. Maybe an after effect of Asari Telomere_…_

'_Theory later, first killing the Reaper.'_

Shepard looked at Balak.

"_Now you will know pain."_

Balak gritted his….non-teeth. His sensors were going wild but swallowing his fear he mocked her again in a prideful tone.

"**Your tricks won't work on me this time Shepard!"**

The reaper rose, red eyes glowing and charged. Shepard dashed too. She was too fast for the Reaper to catch up. In a zig-zag motion of blur she reached the Reapers feet and removed her….spine. Which turned into a sword like weapon into her hands and started slashing.

Balak jumped into the air, firing many onboard weapons. Missiles, lasers, plasma cannons, heat beams. The tail opened showing a giant Thanix cannon.

Shepard moved her palm forward and spoke.

"_Almighty Push."_

And as on cue the universe obeyed her command.

All the attacks were blown away. The airborne reaper couldn't hold before the storm. But Shepard was not done.

"_Attract All Creation."_

Balak's colossus reaper body suddenly changed its trajectory 180 degrees. It was like getting sucked inside a black hole. Falling toward the wasteland.

Shepard's back shoulder limbs transformed into wing like appendage. She jumped in air, the ground cracking beneath.

She appeared in front of the reaper with the glowing sword and brought it down towards the Scythe. The arm was cut off. The being of time met the being of nothing. Paradox happened and the arm was disintegrated in the air.

Both figures fell down, Balak barely on his six legs and Shepard clearly landed on the opposite side.

In a roar Balak charged, opening the insect reaper's mouth and charging the Thanix cannon. The cannon was fired.

Shepard brought her palms forward in a defensive position. The liquid moving at light speed met the pinnacle of evolution. Shepard stood her ground. The molten slug differentiated across the small figure.

Shepard dashed at high speed cutting the Reaper across several weak joints. The Reaper was too slow to react.

Parts as big as Normandy were cut off, parts of black metal, onboard weapons fell down disintegrating. Shepard blinded the Reaper's eyes.

Balak in a frustrated roar brought down its other scythe, which Shepard stopped with her sword. _'Rules of Nature.'_

Shepard got a hold of the Scythe arm and picked the Reaper off its six legs and threw it in the air. Jumping again she slashed the arm several times and finally removed it from the joint.

The reaper fell to the ground again creating a crater.

Shepard on the other hand landed perfectly. She closed her hands a black glowing ball forming in between.

"_Planetary Devastation."_

A black hole like sphere formed in the air. Sucking both matter and electromagnetic radiation in the vicinity. Balak barely stood his ground. Bringing fort the tail cannon, he fired another molten slug at Shepard.

"_Almighty Push."_

Balak was blown again, this time he was sucked in the air where a large ball of rock was forming. The Reaper was impaled by large spears made of rock and metal.

Shepard closed her palms, the ball of rock compressed and then exploded. The Reaper body was falling down, beyond all repairs. Shepard flew in the air at the speed of sound in 6 atm. environment.

She cut the Reaper core in half and severed the head.

The body disintegrated. The head fell on the ground. The eyes glowed red for a second but then gave up.

Shepard landed next to the Reaper head and transformed back into her human form.

She strode towards it, knocking at several locations she finally found her mark.

Balak was ripped from the inside of the Reaper. With only a torso and a head he couldn't run away. Several tubes and wires were connected to his body at different locations. Shepard severed all those and tossed him on the ground.

Balak wiggled like a fish out of water. Expression of fear mixed with rage on his eyeless, skinless, toothless face.

"You! Why won't you die! Haven't my species suffered enough? Why do you have to kill us like flies? Why do monsters like you have all the power? Why my people are declared terrorists and outcasts? While you slaughter my people like they are just bags of flesh! Why didn't you died over Alchera? All the Batarians would have celebrated the day of your demise. Tell me! Why won't you just die!"

Balak was screaming and crying blood from his eye sockets. His face looked like a man who has lost everything and abandoned every hope.

Shepard just grinned, she was going to have lots of fun with him on the Valkyrie. But first.

'_Time for the catchphrase'_

"Nanomachines Son! The answer to everything!"

Balak screamed.

**TWELVE HOURS LATER**

**ON VALKYRIE**

Shepard was tired, exhausted beyond human measures but still standing. A happy smile on her face. Looking at her collection.

After a ten hour long torture session with Balak his reaperised body finally gave up.

A new item for her mass effect jar collection of souvenir in her cabin.

Saren's head. Check.

Illusive Man's eyes. Check.

Wrex's Testicles. Check.

Matriarch Benezia's chest. Check.

Jeff "Joker" Moreau's femur which somehow survived. Check.

Ashley William's burned heart. Check.

Thane Krios's lungs. Check.

Sparatus's fingers. Check.

Several other Jars. Check.

Finally Balak's Brain. And check!

"Uh…Shepard?"

"Oh…Hello Tali. What do you need?"

"We will be reaching Hagalaz in a few hours, …what's in those jars?"

"Just my little hobby Tali."

Shepard wiped out Illium from the face of the galaxy and killed all the eye-witnesses before they left the Terminus system.

The Krogans were happy when belly full.

Using the Batarians Ship's last FTL jump signal from the Mass Relay, Shepard planted evidence pointing towards the Batarian Hegemony. They were blowing planets too after all.

The council increased their efforts to contain the Batarian threat. _'In citadel space' _they were already at their limits with the terrorist attacks, war on Tuchanka and their falling economy. There were reports coming in of Rachni sightings near outer Council Space.

The largest part of Batarian Militant Army was last seen near the dwarf planet Pluto.

Earth's days were numbered.

Humanity and System Alliance withdrawal to their homeworld to protect it to their last breathe against the army sixteen times bigger than them. The Leviathan of Dis was last seen orbiting Neptune few days ago. They were still part of the council, if only in name because the council didn't wanted to _loose _Shepard who was _working for them_ in the Terminus Systems killing Batarian Terrorists. She was still their best Spectre.

The Quarians have finally extracted the Reaper core from the Derelict Reaper, which luckily didn't looked like a cross between a mantis and scorpion. Hagalaz was a priority but before that.

John Shepard was the only eye witness but the council didn't listen to him. Like they didn't listen to her against Saren. Sparatus tried to air quote from his cybernetic hands.

John Shepard pulled a gun.

He was banned from Citadel and Council Space.

**ON NORMANDY SR-2**

Admiral Hackett looked like he would commit suicide by falling into a Mass Relay. Naked.

"So Jane refused."

"Oh, She did more than that."

John said narrowing his eyes. He has seen everything.

"Calm down soldier, at this time we got our hands full as it is."

"The new Alliance heads here on earth are just kids trying to play war, fighting among themselves to fill their own pockets before Armageddon arrives."

Hackett said with a voice mix with disgust and sigh_. 'Has he dyed his hair? They looked shinier!'_

"How's Earth holding up?"

John said with a worried voice, his crew barely survived and now his home planet would be destroyed in the coming days.

Hackett's face looked grim and weary. It looked so old that an Asari Matriarch would look like a newborn in front of him.

"Barely. The Government has fallen already, Alliance has to declare Martial Law and take control of the major cities. Crime has sky rocked for the past month. We have to declare earth's currency null because of food shortage and prices. Millions have died already in third world countries due to starvation. We have lost contact with all of our colonies in the Terminus Systems. We don't even know that if someone is alive out there. "

"The Batarian fleet is at our doorstep with nukes and bioweapons and the council is just sitting there watching humanity's demise. The embassy is closed for indefinite time but still there. Although it won't for long. We can't even protect the few humans in Citadel and its space from Batarian pirates and slavers. People are losing hope on earth. I don't think humanity will survive without Jane Shepard, Commander. And now that _woman _has turn her back on us, I think our days are numbered."

"There's still hope!"

John Shepard, Paragon said.

"Oh…so tell me the good news commander, does you find a Reaper's body. Does all Batarians died in a surprise reaper attack. Does a newfound species is coming to help us. Does Jane changed her mind? Tell me Commander I don't think I will live much longer." _'Take your pills old man you will live.'_

Hackett said in a voice which sounded near the endless pits of hysteria and madness.

John bit his lips.

"I don't know if it's good news or bad. Admiral."

"What could be worse than extinction of your species Commander?"

"…"

"…"

"After returning to the Normandy, Jane Shepard send me a mail."

"What were the contents?"

Hackett asked in a curious and a little hope filled voice.

"They were mathematical equations and diagrams, I couldn't understand them."

"But after I showed them to Dr. Maelon, he said that they were the blueprints of Reaper IFF which we need to get to the Collector base."

"But I don't understand her motive behind helping us, Admiral. She has clearly turned her back on humanity, why is she helping us now?"

"I think it is some kind of trap to lure us to the other side of the Relay. I think she is working for the Reapers."

John Shepard said in his oh so masculine voice.

Hackett was silent for a second. He looked at the commander.

"Even if it is a trap Commander, we cannot lose this opportunity. Collector technology is our only way out of this situation. Take the blueprints and travel through the Omega 4 relay, that's an order."

"Understood Admiral."

**INSIDE THE SHADOW BROKER'S SHIP ON HAGALAZ**

"Shepard is that the Shadow Broker."

Tali looked, shocked seeing the body of the man who tried to kill her on the Citadel during her pilgrimage.

"Looks familiar doesn't he."

"I never thought he would turn out to be…this."


	16. Chapter 16:Casting The Die

**CASTING THE DIE**

**ON NORMANDY SR-2**

John Shepard was nervous, it was the last day that Reaper IFF was installed on the Normandy.

The whole Team was on a mission when the Collectors attacked and took most of the crew with them.

Only James Vega who was still injured from the fight with the armored Quarian and the pilot Harley Quinn survived.

The ship was now much difficult to run than before with only a pilot and a ship VI.

EDI or the core chip retrieved from the destroyed base of the late Illusive Man who was found shot through the head and missing his eyes, sitting on the toilet seat. The reverse engineered reaper AI was installed on the Normandy, but like any other Paragon John Shepard refused to install an AI on his Normandy trusting the skills of his pilot. _'Great going there hero.'_

The AI turned VI was having difficulty to handle so many operations of the Alliance Frigate.

"What should we do John" Miranda asked her love.

"I don't know Miranda, everything happened so fast. We don't even got time to react."

"Now each second I waste thousands die on earth, we have to hurry up if we want to save humanity."

John Shepard was sitting on his bed wearing his boxers with Miranda Lawson lying looking at the stars above through the roof.

"Commander, the crew is ready."

The Pilot announced from the announcement speakers.

"Come on Miranda let's go."

John Shepard got up and looked at all the service medals and family photos on his desk. Both of his parents were in the Alliance Military before him, his childhood was spent on ships and stations. Following in his parents footsteps, he enlisted at the age of eighteen.

But his greatest inspiration was always Jane Shepard, the youngest to pass the N7 at the age of 15 with top marks which were still a record. Cleared the Jon Garrison Academy at the age of 16 in Nano-biotechnology, multidimensional theory and quantum physics, reverse AI engineering, sub-atomic interactions and zero kelvin chemistry, transitional states of dark matter and thesis on the effects of dark energy on multidimensional planes, physiological and psychological aspects on galactic species and their culture, and the list goes on.

He can't even pronounce the name of some subjects and didn't even knew the head of the rest. _'Is that the kind of person you want protecting the galaxy.'_

And then there were those mission records, clean and always completed under record time.

The only anomaly was that Jane Shepard's kill count were always in prime number, which now sounded much more sinister when he knew the truth.

John suppressed a sigh, now the future of humanity depended on his shoulders, he will not fail them even he has to sacrifice his life. _'Don't wish who knows when it will come true.'_

**INSIDE THE SHADOW BROKER'S SHIP ON HAGALAZ**

"Jane is that the Shadow Broker."

Tali looked, shocked seeing the body of the man or the thing who tried to kill her on the Citadel during her pilgrimage.

"Looks familiar doesn't it."

"I never thought he would turn out to be…this."

In front of them the mutilated corpse of a Thorian was hanging, supported by beams, specially designed walls for weight endurance and support structures.

"Shadow Broker was a plant!"

Tali still couldn't believe that once a plant tried and almost succeeded to kill her.

"It make sense, he knew we were coming but didn't run away that leads to only two conclusion that he was either sure in his defenses or he couldn't move from his location."

"And finally Shadow Broker have been working for quite some time now, so it removes short lived species from the list. It couldn't have been a group, they always fall prey to backstabbing and sabotage."

"But how did the Shadow Broker controlled the ship or the information or maintain his network."

"Just like the Thorian controlled the colonists on Feros using hallucinogens and nerve controlling enzymes."

"…So what should we now Jane?"

"Tali, do you really need to ask something like that?"

"…"

"…I suppose not but Keelah! This place is massive Shepard, look at all these panels and all the information. With this kind of power someone can easily manipulate the government of any species. They can start a war or stop it with just the flick of their fingers. Isn't that too much power for anyone?"

"Nope, there is never enough power, the more the better."

"…So are you really going to take over?"

"Yes I will but I have to go to Rannoch first."

Tali's eyes widened, she has nearly forgotten about her homeworld!

"Alright Shepard we will do this together, we will take my homeworld from the geth! Let me just prepare for it, we will teach those Bosh'tet geth a lesson!"

"Yes we will but you will be staying her, you will take care of the Broker Network while I am gone."

Tali stood there, her gun dropped on the floor with a clatter. Her mouth piece flickered like she was about to say something but couldn't think properly, Shepard knew this would happen so she just watch waiting for the outburst.

"No! no nononono…no Shepard I don't want this! I want to see my homeworld again! You promised Shepard that one day I will be…"

Tali's rant continued on, Shepard just listened.

Tali was still naïve, still a child but a smart child who learned quickly. Shepard could easily manipulate Liara with love, who was now ruling Omega with an iron fist. Her own pet Pirate Queen.

She has subdued Wrex already. Every Krogan on Tuchanka feared and respected her. After she passed the ancient rite of passage by killing twenty Kalros on foot she was declared the Tuchanka Warlord.

But for Tali she has to use her final trump card. Her friendship.

'_Let's test those new facial expression I learned from that man.'_

First take small and steady steps towards her.

Hug her. She is crying and is in denial.

Tell her it will be alright, she is doing it for her people.

Ask her why she don't want this, she could finally have her revenge.

She doesn't understand. Make her angry.

Ask her the reason behind their exile. No, not the geth, the Council.

Eye's widened, again in denial and is horrified.

Show her the info inside the broker network. All the batarian slavers, Quarian pleas for help to council, no planet to support them by council laws, their spying and sabotaging of Migrant Fleets.

Now she is shaking in anger but still not enough.

Call her name softly, squeeze her shoulder. Tell her about how you helped her species. By giving resources, omega, and the past few months.

Show that she is in your debt and should be grateful. She is grateful.

Finally the trump card, the cure for their weak immune system which you developed three years ago. Tell her you just made it now.

She is happy and hugging you. She will do this.

Finally the paragon smile you practiced before the mirror for the past few hours.

And Score.

"Alright Jane, I will do this ….for you."

"See that you do."

The monitors flickered.

"Operative Lara to Shadow broker, come in shadow broker…"

"Operative Harrison to broker, come in broker…"

"Operative Arona here, the signal got lost just a moment age…"

"Operative Feron here..."

Shepard looked at Tali and nodded, who was looking nervous and gasping for air like a volus. She went to the control panel with wobbly feet, crossing and shifting her three fingers in nervousness. After reaching the panel she switched the pitch of her voice.

"_This is the Shadow Broker."_

**ON NORMANDY SR-2**

"But John, Normandy is not ready yet. We need more time to upgrade the…"

Alenko tried to reason with John Shepard who was taking them to the maw's pit.

"Sorry Alenko but my decision is final we cannot wait any longer, I am not going to abandon my crew to the collectors."

"I understand your concerns Shepard but I am saying that we must always be prepared that's how the previous crew survived Alchera. Because Jane…"

John narrowed his eyes.

"Don't give me an example of that monster Alenko. She didn't survived there on her own, she survived because you were there for her as a team and she clearly broke that trust."

"Well actually she did it on her own I wa…"

John interrupted him. _'Lambs for slaughter.'_

"My point still stands, without each other we are weak but together as a team we can do what nobody can."

Shepard stood up from his seat on the meeting room, everyone of the _un_loyal team member was present.

Samara, Jack, Captain Anderson, Kaiden Alenko, James Vega, Katsumi Goto, Miranda Lawson and Maelon Heplorn.

This was it, Shepard put his Paragon cap on.

"This is it people. Our actions today will decide the fate of humanity. We have never faced the threat of extinction this big before. The whole galaxy is out for our blood. But we won't give up, we will never give up. That is what means to be human that is the real strength of humanity. We have always faced challenges bigger than us but we have always prevailed, this time when earth need us the most, failure is not an option. Earth and its people are depending upon us today, we will not fail them."

"First we need to make a team."

"Captain Anderson you will be leading the fire team."

"Katsumi you will go inside the vents to open the gates inside the collector vessel."

"Any Questions, good let's do this for humanity." _'Yay'_

**NEAR OMEGA 4 RELAY**

"Jane they are here."

"_Good, we will be reaching the Perseus Veil soon, do you have the kill switch Liara."_

"I do Jane."

"_Good, if anyone else returns except for Lawson kill them on sight."_


	17. Chapter 17: Turning The Tides

Note: Please Review, I live on the parasitic feedback energy.

**TURNING THE TIDES**

**INSIDE THE PERSEUS VEIL**

The Mass Relay lit up like a charismas tree.

Thousands upon thousands of Migrant Fleet Ships pour out from it. Armed with every type of onboard weapons which would send the Turian fleet screaming. Shepard designed all those in the last year. Mass Effect cores were replaced by ARC reactors. Shields were also strengthened and modified for withstanding Geth weapons. The Quarian suits were reprogrammed according to the geth weaponry systems.

The Valkyrie was at the front, the tip of the spear which will tear the Veil apart.

The admirals were sitting in the meeting room surrounded by Quarian Military Guards. Holding modified plasma and electric arc weapons specifically made to disable geth platforms not destroy them. They need their army after all.

"We will follow the spear formation and before reaching the Tikkun System spread out, the heavy fleet will be at the front. I modified them to absorb most of the direct energy and plasma attacks. The patrol fleet will scout the outer planets for any Geth ambush. The Civilian Fleet will distract the Geth from the main cargo, the Reaper Core. It is vital that it reaches the surface even if it means the loss of some thousand Quarians. The main hub of the Geth collective network system is under water, Xen will deploy Typhoon and I will be using my Susanoo to transport the Reaper core to the sea bed of the Calypso Ocean. The pressure will be quite high there so I suggest to wear deep sea Mark V armor. Any questions."

After everyone nodded Jane Shepard continued.

"To disable the Satellite defenses and geth hubs use shorts bursts of EMP, it will give us a few moments to breathe. They still outnumber us a thousand to one so steer your ships clear of their targeting index frequencies."

"After that we will enter the atmosphere, the ground to space defense cannons will be quite handful, send the Kamikaze orbital droppers to overload their targeting matrix."

"After that landing on the surface. We have scanned the surface with low frequency scanners. It is filled with surface network and hubs. There are underground facilities too, bunkers and road networks. After we take over Rannoch, you won't be needed to build the cities. The geth metropolitan network is spacious enough according to Quarian standards to make it livable."

"There is another problem."

At this everyone looked at Shepard.

"There is an anomaly between the Geth, somehow they got their hands on Sovereign's limbic systems and focusing nodes. The Geth build a small scale Reaper platform from reverse engineering it."

Daro'Xen was tapping her finger on the table.

"How large it is."

"Around 300-400 m tall, taller than Typhoon and Susanoo."

"Weapons capability."

"One Reaper Thanix cannon in-between the optical network. Seven arc and thermal based on board weapons, multitude of sensors and detectors, nuclear and gamma based weapons all in all a walking disaster to happen."

"And how do we stop something like that without killing it."

Shepard smirked, they think alike.

"It will be an excellent addition to the Quarian military don't you think? But we have to subdue it first."

"And what do you suggest." Xen was also smiling and everyone else was backing up a step.

"Well I have made a strategy, using my Susanoo and Biotics I will bring down a small asteroid on it, it will be enough to crush it under its weight so it cannot move further or do any significant damage."

"Y-you..can move an asteroid!" Shala'Raan spluttered.

"Yes…that's how I destroyed Illium."

**AT THE GALACTIC CORE**

"Is everyone all right."

John Shepard asked his team after they landed on the Collector base. The ride from Omega 4 relay to the center of the galaxy was a bumpy one. After they were flung across the galaxy to its core, which was surrounded by meteoroids bigger than the now destroyed Arcturus Station. Maelon didn't survived, the Mass Effect core exploded only leaving his burnt bones behind.

"Harley status."

"The ship's primary power core is offline commander, it will take some time to start up, looks like we are stuck here."

"Shepard, we must send a tech specialist inside the thermal vents to open the gates."

Miranda suggested.

"Alright then, Kasumi you are up to it."

"Got it Shep I will not disappoint you." _'Oh we will see.'_

"We also need a leader for the fire team John. I say you should make me lead, Anderson will be more helpful fighting alongside you?"

Miranda said.

"Like hell I will follow you Cheerleader!"

"I am still a better leader than you Jack."

"Knock it off both of you, sorry Miranda but Captain Anderson is more experienced than you for this task."

Miranda just smiled.

"Thank you Son, and if I don't make it back alive I want to tell you that I am proud of you. You have brought an old man hope again." _'He said it himself'_

"Alright then, this is it."

**OUTSIDE THE TIKKUN SYSTEM**

"We are entering the star system."

"Heavy Fleet Reporting."

"Patrol Fleet ready to scout ahead."

**ON COLLECTOR BASE**

"SHEPARD HELP!"

"Kasumi do you read me! Kasumi!"

"She is gone Shepard!"

"What happened back there?!"

"The Thermal Vents were closed before she could escape, she was incinerated alive before the vents closed and crushed her. I am sorry John."

Miranda said.

"Damn it! We are not even in there and we already lost two crew members!"

**OUTSIDE THE RANNOCH THERMOSPHERE**

"Status."

Jane asked the ship AI HAL.

"Geth's attempt to hack the Valkyrie are proving unsuccessful."

"Shepard we are ready to deploy the Typhoon, half of the Kamikaze forces are dead but they did their job."

Xen's voice came from the screen.

"Good then, I will be arriving shortly. How many causalities on the Civilian Fleet."

"5000 dead. Direct payload of a thermobaric bomb."

"Just a minor setback."

"Correct."

"Keep the Geth busy, and start the orbital bombardment on the major junctions."

"HAL fire Thanix cannon at that dreadnought I want it out of my sky."

"Firing."

**ON COLLECTOR BASE**

"Anderson!"

The headless body of Anderson didn't responded.

"**Assuming Direct Control."**

"Shit, not again!"

Anderson was leading the Fire squad consisting of Samara, James Vega and himself leading. Harbinger took control of a dead collector and ripped out his spine and after that crush his skull like a pulp from the jaws above. His eyes were still on the floor. His bowl motion coming loose and mixing with his blood on the floor.

"**Shepard, you are insignificant compared to the other one."**

"What?! What the hell are you talking about?"

Shepard shouted between exchanging shots which do not seem to have any effect.

"**The female of your weak species, she is beyond your understanding. You may stop us but you will not stop her. Ascension is inevitable."**

"I knew she was working for you! What did you do, indoctrinate her?!"

"**Your understanding is limited by your intellect, indoctrination control weak minds like your own. Evolution cannot be stopped, I will personally guide your species singularity."**

"You are just a machine! You are not even alive! And she has sold her soul to the devil to become like you! Humanity will never become a soulless machine!"

"**Confidence born from ignorance, she is a being surpassed only by us. The forces of universe bend to our will. You cannot even grasp what powers she commands."**

"What power?! Like Saren! You turned her into your slave?"

"**Communicating with you is considered…..too worthless. We are the pinnacle of evolution. You are bacteria struggling against leviathans. Both our powers are unmatched. Even as you struggle against us the other is completing the cycle."**

"I will stop you! I will stop her! We don't need your technology to solve our problems, we will find our own way! That's the human way!"

Somewhere in dark space Harbinger had enough.

Harbinger said to the other collector drones.

"**Destroy this Shepard. The waste of genetic material."**

**ON RANNOCH**

"Everyone clear the area!"

Kal'Reegar was on a geth hovercraft speeding it as far away as possible.

Jane was in her Demoniac form, her green eyes showing ripple like pattern. Above the Reaper Destroyer in the air.

"_Almighty Push."_

The ground sank.

**ON COLLECTOR BASE**

"Jack!"

Shepard screamed. Again.

"**The dead are useless."**

Jack was blown apart by Harbinger's biotics.

She tried the same trick she tried against the YMIR mechs on the prison. It didn't worked.

Harbinger hammered Jack's skull. Her eyes burst out from their sockets in a shower of blood. He ripped his hands inside Jack's ribcage and blew her apart. Jack's organs were splattered everywhere. Her lowered body just stood there mainly below her waist. And then fell.

"Jack!"

"**Resistance is futile. Your species showed great potential but only one was capable enough to reach it. The rest are useless. Your species will die on their planet."**

"No! I will not give up! Humanity will never fall down!"

"**Your words are as empty as your future. I am the Harbinger of your perfection."**

**ON RANNOCH**

"_So you stopped it."_

The Reaper Destroyed was under the asteroid crushed beneath its weight. It's one eye glowing red, preparing to fire.

"_Let's see how you stop the second one."_

_"Shattered Heaven"_

Another asteroid fell from the sky surround by purple flames.

**ON COLLECTOR BASE**

"My God! They are making a reaper from the colonists." _'No shit Sherlock.'_

"We still need that Reaper's body Shepard."

Miranda said, looking at him carefully. They were both there in the center of collector facility, everyone else was dead or in pieces. Only Shepard and Miranda survived.

Vega was crushed under the giant gates. His insides were decoration the left corner.

Samara was eaten by the swarm.

Alenko was personally executed by Harbinger, his head ripped apart along with his spine.

"No, It's not worth it Miranda! We have to blow this place up! It is an abomination."

"But it is important for Humanity Shepard, you said that yourself."

Her pistol hand was shaking a little.

"No! I cannot let something like this survive! Humanity have to survive on its own. Not the cost of other's lives."

A hologram appeared.

"_My, my you are still alive."_

John turned around sharply, his assault rifle ready in his hands.

The figure looked human. It wore some kind of white armor. A female from the looks. With green eyes with ripple like pattern and red horns.

"You, what are you!"

"**Shepard."**

Harbinger's hologram appeared behind them towering above.

"_The Geth were able to decipher your exponential time curve ratio."_

The humanoid said to the Reaper.

"**Geth an annoyance, limited utility."**

"_Hmm..True, But those annoying little utilities are mine now with the Krogans, Quarians, Rachni and many others. For my solution to be complete I just need a Reaper body that is outside the existence-time paradox for a moment."_

The figured transformed and turned into Jane.

John's eyes widened.

"You!"

Miranda said nothing.

Jane Shepard looked at the Human Reaper core hanging in the facility.

**ON OMEGA**

Liara walked into her room and brought two glasses. She opened a wine bottle and poured herself some wine.

"I know you are there Garrus."


	18. Chapter 18: Humanity

**HUMANITY**

**ON COLLECTOR BASE  
**

"Jane Shepard."

The three human figures looked at the source of the voice.

Admiral Hackett appeared in a Hologram, he was in his Alliance uniform and wearing his eye patch. _He looked so badass that even Harbinger didn't said anything._

"It's been a long time since I have last seen you."

"Long time indeed, look at you, lost your way to the toilet, is age finally getting to you old man."

Hackett said noting, this was the Jane Shepard he knew.

"I may be old Jane but I haven't lost my faith in humanity yet. We will fight to the end and survive with or without your help."

Jane chuckled.

"Not when this…collection of organs and muscles blows up the base to oblivion. Where do you find people like this, I know the whole Alliance is like that but this is a new horizon."

Hackett looked at John Shepard.

"Just what the hell do you think you are doing soldier?"

"Admiral Hackett." John Shepard said while lowering his Assault Rifle, his posture relaxed a bit.

"I am destroying this place Sir. It is a giant laboratory, they are experimenting on **human** lives here."

"Don't you think we knew what was going on out there? We need that Reaper Core commander, that object is of vital importance for the survival of our species."

Hackett said while rubbing his …one eye. _'Damn Paragons'_

John Shepard narrowed his eyes, he removed the bomb from its outer shell package.

"No Admiral. I won't let this happen. This is not **Humanity**, these people lost their lives and were turned into that…that thing. I cannot let this happen. **Humanity** will have to find his own way. We will fight the Batarians with our courage, with our friendship. Alliance don't need to rely on Reapers and their technology. **Humanity **always finds a way. Our bonds are more stronger than anything technology can ever achieve. They don't know our strength, they don't know our pain because they are not **human**!"

Harbinger's figure dimmed, maybe he was going into hibernation.

Before Hackett could have a heart attack, Jane's laughter drew his attention.

Jane was laughing like a maniac, full bellowed laughter which echoed inside the empty facility.

Hackett was looking worried.

Harbinger's figure brightened again.

"Oh! This is rich! Earth fighting Batarian army equipped with nukes and bioweapons with what? Friendship! Courage! Now you see old man why all this happened in the first place."

**ON OMEGA**

"I know you are there, Garrus."

Garrus's figure appeared out of thin air. His invisibility cloaking function disappeared completely.

"It's good to see you too Liara."

Garrus said, he was wearing his blue Turian armor and was armed with a sniper rifle.

Liara smirked a little and moved with a swagger.

Garrus eyed her from under his helmet, she was not the Liara he knew. Liara of the Normandy was the exact opposite of this one, she was nerdy, shy and would die from shame before wearing clothes like that.

This Liara walked seductively and with a confidence that rivaled a matriarch. The clothes were no different and matched Aria T'Loak's if a little different shade of color.

"We knew what you were doing on the Citadel Garrus. Cleaning out crime under your guise of _Archangel._"

"Oh, and how do you know that?"

Garrus asked, but he had a hunch.

"The new Shadow Broker is Jane's ally, he has accepted to help her in providing Intel on enemy movements and situations outside of the Terminus Systems. The council and the Citadel is a lost cause, after everything that is happening they have no idea how much deep in trouble they are. The Turian military is fighting a losing battle on Tuchanka, the Batarian hegemony is going to wipe out Earth and the council is just sitting there doing nothing."

Garrus said the only thing he could.

"You have changed Liara."

"Everything is changed Garrus, it is for the best. The Council is ignorant of the coming extinction cycle. The Protheans were wiped out because of this too, every species before that. If not for Shepard we all would be fumbling in the dark."

Liara walked towards the window and looked at Omega.

Omega was changed under the combined rule of Shepard and Liara, it was cleaner for starters. Nobody dared to disobey or commit crimes when Krogan Task Force Omega patrolled the streets. The environment was still sinister but there was a calm, well except the mind numbing music and drugs.

"I always feared Shepard and her ruthlessness but after living on Omega for the last two years, I can understand its necessity."

"Killing millions is necessity."

Garrus fought a losing battle.

Liara looked at him with cold eyes for the first time.

"Yes, it is the end result that matters. The road chosen is always filled with distractions and traps but if you want to reach your destination you have to make sacrifices."

Garrus cocked his sniper rifle.

"Billions dead, the galaxy heading towards a war while the Reapers arrive, is that is your destination. I am sorry Liara but I cannot allow you to kill innocent lives."

Liara smirked again, she has read Turian Psychology and Garrus was suffering from a severe case of savior complex.

"Garrus, you and me both know how Jane works. Do you think she didn't knew you would come here to stop her?"

"You are not thinking logically Garrus. Do you really think you have any chance to defeat Shepard with just a sniper rifle? Wars are won by intelligence, tactics and superior strategy not by barging inside the enemy territory wielding weapons hoping that by some chance you would cripple them with just a lucky shot."

"In comic e-books it might happen, that the _hero_ somehow always survive against impossible odds but in real life only the powerful crush the weak, again and again and again."

"Then why you are fighting against the Reapers if you believe stronger always means better."

Garrus said, his drug addled hero complex brain refusing to believe the truth.

"Because it is nature. Things just are, air blows, water flows and nature takes its course. I didn't studied in the University of Athame for the last sixty years without knowing a things or two. The Reapers are a natural phenomenon, they are present because the universe strives for perfection. A liquid in space without gravitational force for example, it would take a spherical shape when the intermolecular repulsion and attraction balance out. Without any external force to interfere the particles behave according to their nature. The Reapers are in the universe to balance it, to save it from destruction but their solution is not perfect and nature wants perfection. Whoever wins this war will become that solution."

Liara said without any fear or care in her voice, she moved across the room and sat on the couch crossing her legs.

"Now you are just talking like Shepard."

Garrus said still refusing.

Liara smirk was full blown this time.

"What do you think Garrus, don't you find this strange that the Omega station which is impenetrable even by Council Spectres and STG and somehow you a /Vigilante got inside by just hiding inside a cargo ship. You wouldn't be here if Shepard didn't wanted you to be. This isn't a movie where the _hero_ always wins without any explanation by just blowing things up and running around dodging bullets. Let me think, you are here to record the conversation with me and show it to the Council, you somehow found some lowly operative and know something or some place and are here to blackmail me, change my mind, plant doubts, change my allegiance well then you are sorely mistaken then."

Liara crossed her legs again, the wine glass in her hand.

"I only love Shepard and will only follow her, not anyone else."

Liara said while drinking from the glass.

"I am sorry Garrus but by coming here you have broken Omega's one rule."

"Oh and what is that."

Garrus said gripping the trigger of the sniper rifle ready for a shot.

Garrus's head blew up, showering the place with bits of brain and pieces. His body just stood there for a few seconds gushing out blood from the new hole and finally hit the floor. There was a hole on the glass window.

"Don't fuck with Liara."

Liara said and after remembering something blushed.

On the outside thirty blocks away, Operative Phantom stored the Widow Rifle in the case.

Garm came inside the room.

'What should we do to the body?"

"Feed it to the Vorcha."

**ON COLLECTOR BASE  
**

"I always knew what you would do after coming here meat bag, I can see you are an excellent leader with all the crew dead or paste."

Jain said after calming down, everyone was one step behind even Harbinger's hologram moved away a few centimeters. But not John.

"It's all because of your fault! Your decision to become a reaper slave and now you want the Reapers to control all of **humanity!**"

"We will never fall, you can break our body but you cannot break **human** spirit! That is what it means to be **human**, that is the strength of **humanity! **That is what you gave up!"

"Sovereign was defeated with the bravery and courage of Alliance Marines, you just took all the credit!"

He moved closed to her.

"You are just a disgrace on **Humanity**!" _'Now with a capital H.'_

Jane smirked, she already knew and has replaced their Uranium core based thermonuclear bomb with an electromagnetic pulse projector. It will damage the base sure, but it will not destroy the reaper core.

"You should hurry up than, the reaper core is still outside the existence-time paradox and its memory masking process is still at the limiting threshold so it won't wake up but it won't be that for long."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

John said, understanding not even a single word and narrowed his eyes.

Jane sighed, _'grunts'_ and she had to work under these types of people in the Alliance who screamed _'HUMANITY'_ in everyone's face and not even knew what the other end of an Omni tool was.

"Never mind that, do whatever you want, it's not that I can hurt you from this hologram."

"…"

"Well if you consider the solid plasma projection, at a frequency resonating with your…"

Harbinger knew that the Collector base will be out of its grasp soon.

"**Shepard."**

Both Jane and the other one looked.

"**Know this, even at the pinnacle of your evolution, you have to face us. Ascension will be reached, one way or the other."**

Jane smirked knowing too well and looked at Hackett for final time.

"Good luck saving earth old man, I have booked front seats for the show."

The Hologram disappeared.

"**This Exchange is over."**

Harbinger disappeared too.

"Commander, please reconsider about earth. We won't be able to defend it without that kind of technology."

Hackett knew better than to argue but still.

John looked pained.

"I am sorry Admiral but I am confident in humanity's power. We will win this war on our own."

Hackett sighed, there goes earth.

"I hope you are right commander. Hackett out."

John set the bomb and turned around to go to the Normandy.

The first thing he saw was the barrel of a shotgun.

He never knew what hit him.

John's body slumped to the ground, his head blown apart. The base of the skull could be seen. His face freezed into an expression of shock.

Miranda cocked the shotgun again and this time pointed at his groin.

"I never liked that small thing."

Miranda pulled the trigger. She then took out most of the vital organs with incinerator rounds. The body could be revived as a foot soldier by collectors so no chances were taken.

Fifteen shots at chest, twenty shots at head, and thirty five shots for each and every limb. And everything was just red color on the floor.

"Miranda Lawson to Normandy."

**ON RANNOCH**

Shepard was standing on the highest geth tower. The preparations for Quarian arrival were going on.

Each and every geth was now based on HAL's designed, his mental pathway was transduced into geth consensus and replacing it. The Geth now obeyed her command. She has an army of Krogan, Rachni, Geth, Quarian, she has uplifted another species, they were named Yahg. Yahg were like a lovechild between a Krogan and a Salarian.

Citadel Council was falling, Earth will be destroyed in the coming days. Reapers were arriving in one year. After she destroyed the Alpha Relay, their arrival was delayed but they will come nonetheless.

And finally she has the Collector Base. After the pulse attack, most of the station was down. Most of the Collectors and self-destruct mechanisms were turned off after the bomb exploded. The collectors husk will be an excellent army, dropping from above during the fight on the enemy. They were equipped with advance energy weapons, the only thing that was missing was a commander or a collector general. After Shepard found out about a sleeping pod containing a Prothean on Eden Prime. She infused him with her reaper nanobots making him the new collector general.

The station was too big to bring from the relay, so it will be broken down into smaller sectors and assembled after.

Shepard turned into her Demoniac form again, she can do this longer now. With the new humanoid reaper core found in the Collector base, she will be able to evolve everyone on her side into a demoniac, who will obey only her command because it is in the nature of the Rachni gene to follow the Queen. They will be all in all the same but with absolute loyalty to her. Some of them will die because of weak DNA and hereditary genetic disease. Only the strongest will survive, weakness will have no place in her galaxy.

Shepard looked towards the endless sky, her ripple like eyes staring at the sea of stars.

**IN DARK SPACE**

The Reapers awakened.


	19. Chapter 19: Perfection

Note: I have no goddamn clue what I have just written now but I think it's good. Some talking in this chapter, If you like please review.

**PERFECTION**

**ON VALKYRIE**

"Do you require anything else mistress."

"No Legion that will be all."

Shepard said to her Geth platform. She was working on a new device, it was dubbed as octave-microemission-nanoengineered-interfacing-tri-retrofixDNA-indexing-xenoplatform or in short Omnitrix.

After finding out that the reverse engineered Asari telomeres in her system which stopped her aging process making her biologically immortal also had an effect on her demoniac form, she made the Omnitrix to acquire DNA from different species.

The blue limbic structures on her back gave her flight ability and boosted her speed by giving Eezo bursts. Think about what she will be able to do by combining different DNA evolutionary strengths in herself.

Shepard would be able to take their evolutionary forms too.

But first she has to complete the preparations for the Crucible sabotage.

* * *

"Shepard, we will be entering the Sol system shortly."

HAL's voice announced.

Shepard strapped the Omnitrix to her left hand, it recognized her DNA and got attached.

Shepard smirked, everything was not going according to her plan but still her goal will be reached, even if the Council and Alliance in their desperation pulled out their ultimate self-destruct weapon. The Crucible.

Shepard knew about the Crucible from the start. After she destroyed Sovereign and searched its data bank several anomalies were found out.

First about the information of their creators, the Leviathan. The Leviathans were the first species to harness Eezo and Dark Matter and gave it shape in the form of a Reaper.

The reason behind the creation of Harbinger was the same reason Shepard used reaper nanobots, to reach Ascension. An empty shell in which all their conscious could be stored and act like a single being. A Nation. A God.

A being unparalleled by any other, capable of limitless potential and power drawn by the probability of existence of things. Millions of conscious guided by a single identity. A new being was born that day which was the ultimate form Leviathan's could reach. It named itself Harbinger.

Their goal were similar to Shepard's, to become God. But due to the paradoxical nature of their state inside Harbinger they couldn't reach it. The being drawn from nothing required time for sustenance which it got from them but it was still imperfect. In their quest to find biological perfection Harbinger turned successive species into a different kind of Reaper everytime, using their memory masking process to transfuse consciousness into the new body led by their, Harbinger's identity. Trying to find a way, to solve the unsolvable paradoxical problem.

Which she just did using their own technology and tachyon superstate inside temporal dimension. A problem from the start of the universe which couldn't be solved even by the billions of hyperadvance civilizations before them. And she solved that problem using a cheap toy from the Citadel Toy Shop and the Normandy's coffee machine, converting it into a tachyon-eezo particle collider. Which was also used to destroy Sovereign. Advance civilizations indeed.

Instead of thanking her and declaring her their Goddess, Reapers send the collectors to destroy the Normandy and abduct Shepard. The reason behind it was simple.

Even if the goal of Shepard and Harbinger was similar, there could be only one God, one identity. It was a galaxy wide battle to see which of the self-identity would survive and rule the universe.

Shepard or Harbinger.

The Reapers wanted her to be turned into one of them but with only her conscious. Shepard on the other hand wanted to replace the identity of the Reapers and the other species with her own.

Which lead her to the current situation.

The Batarians were about to attack Earth, but to her disappointment the Reapers arrived before the war could start to wipe out humanity.

The other council species had to band together to save their worthless hides. The Citadel council was disbanded. And not surprisingly out of nowhere they found out about a device to stop the Reaper threat once and for all.

The Crucible which was currently being deployed in the Sol system, according to Hackett was their only chance to fight Reapers. A device which was simple enough to understand and build to destroy the sentient machines.

In reality it was a Galaxy wide indoctrination device used only in desperate needs by the Reapers because it always destroyed the Citadel and the Mass Relay network. It was the first time it was being deployed, Harbinger wanted Shepard bad.

She had to delay or postpone all of her plans to end the threat. Her plans for Salarian Genophage, Asari factions, Volus DE atmosphere attenuations, Vorcha Ground Force, Hanar Sushi and other tasks were put on hold.

Shepard's forces consisting of Geth, Quarian, Krogan, Rachni, Yahg, Collectors never partook in the battle between the Citadel forces and the Reapers.

Even with her forces and her tachyon technology and weapons, Reaper capital ships were still more in numerical strength and nearly unstoppable. They had billions of years of perfection on their side. It was suicidal to even think to engage them in a head on space battle. Hackett was clearly being indoctrinated.

Instead Shepard's forces were out there evading direct contact with the Reapers. On planets inside Terminus, direct Tachyon beam satellites, planetary defense shielding and fortification, cyborgs and jaegers were stopping the ground invasion and the main invading forces.

Shepard was out in the Sol system alone. The Valkyrie was modified with a Tachyon-Gamma cannon, the only weakness of a Reaper.

She had to modify her initial plan to use the Human Reaper to communicate with the Mass Relays, instead now Shepard will use the Crucible to spread her nanomachines in the entire Galaxy and turn everyone into a Demoniac. Wipe out their and the Reaper self-identity and instill herself as Goddess.

Good thing nobody was on the ship otherwise they would have a heart attack seeing that grin on her face.

"Shepard, we will be entering the Sol System in 3…2...1."

* * *

**IN SOL SYSTEM**

**INSIDE THE CITADEL/CRUCIBLE**

There was only one thought inside Hackett's mind.

"I'm too old for this."

After Harbinger blasted him at point blank range on earth, he could barely stand.

Instead the future of Galaxy rested on his shoulders. He had to unite the Turians, Hanar, Asari, Salarian, Batarian, Volus and Elcor. Solve their petty problems on their planet. The new Dalatrass was a pain in his ass. After that Sparatus's death due to malfunctioning of his cybernetics because of too much air quoting, he had to choose a new Primarch during a Reaper invasion of Palaven. Finally on Thessia he had to fight that Red Blade wielding cyborg to protect the Prothean VI, in which he lost his left arm. Which was now cybernetic.

And then when he was limping towards the Conduit, some Marauder had the gall to shoot him in the nut.

His legs were going numb.

He was wondering what happened to that John Shepard. It was clear that fool didn't survived. Earth was saved from Batarians by the arrival of the Reapers, which were now tearing it apart. They were tearing everyone apart.

On Palaven a Reaper claiming to be Harbinger warned him of Jane Shepard. And her plan for Galactic Domination.

Hackett wasn't surprised.

He knew Jane Shepard was alive and well. Laughing her ass off like a maniac on his bad luck. That woman couldn't be killed just like that. Even Harbinger, that devil admitted that.

And speaking of the Devil.

"Wake up."

Hackett looked up, or tried to look, focusing his one good eye. Trying to see the glowing figure.

The figure was the same child he has seen getting killed on Earth.

"Where am I?"

Hackett asked the glowing child.

"The Citadel it's my home."

"Who are you?"

Hackett asked to the child now confused, it was clearly something else taking the form of a child which haunted his dreams.

"I am the catalyst."

"I thought the Citadel was the catalyst."

"No, the Citadel is a part of me."

The child replied.

"I need to stop the reapers, do you know how to do that."

He was never good with techno-bullshit. Jane was but she was not here.

"Perhaps, I control the reapers they are my solution."

"Solution to wh…"

Before he could ask the holographic figure, a voice interrupted him, which also filled him with dread.

"_My, my you are still gullible enough to fall to such simple traps, old man."_

Hackett tried to look back.

"_Don't try to move old man, you will have a heart attack. I want to see the look on your face when I take over the Galaxy."_

But Hackett looked back.

"Jane Shepard…Is that really you."

A being with red horns and two green eyes with ripples like pattern was standing, looking at him. The thing transformed back to Jane.

Who was wearing her N7 hoodie and grinning at him, both he and the catalyst took a step back.

"Don't worry, you will live through this and when I am done with the AI, I will explain everything before killing you."

Jane then looked at the hologram child and started typing something in her Omni tool.

"What are you doing human?"

The catalyst asked but before it could do something to stop her.

"I always knew you were a sneaky one Avina, pretending to be a Citadel VI. Installed by the Reapers to indoctrinate the Council and open the mass relay for the Reaper arrival."

"Well let me see…what would happen if I reroute the backdoor channel and fill the primary core with dump data and then a little post-electronic backlash…"

"No, you cannot do that! It will…"

The Hologram flickered and dimmed.

"Please state your request."

The figure said in a monotone.

"Open the transdimensional worm hole."

The Red and Blue platform rose up, an electric arc formed between them. The arc grew in frequency and intensity, it divided to form an eye like shape and in the middle was a vortex, shifting and changing. Humming.

"Jane whatever you are trying to achieve, I won't let that happen."

Hackett said praying for a swift death.

"Oh, really. As you don't know me well to understand my motives. And do you really think your cheap pistol is going to stop me?"

Shepard strode towards Hackett while he tried to shot her.

Shepard came close enough and gave him a leg sweep. After that she blasted both of his kneecaps. And his other nut too.

"Don't worry, your wife won't miss your family jewels. Last time I saw her, she was bending on a table while Anderson… "

"You…!"

Hackett finally said, even with all of his pain.

Jane smirked.

"Yup, neurotoxic drugs and reproductive enzymes. But don't worry I have done more than that."

So Jane told him her full story, from the slums of earth to Alliance from there to her Spectre career and what has she done till now without leaving any details.

Hackett looked horrified, even when he was dying, his pain forgotten.

"You are a monster!"

"Maybe but now this monster will become a GOD."

Shepard entered the wormhole, while Hackett screamed on the floor, electric currents passing through his body.

* * *

**INSIDE THE CROSS-DIMENSIONAL PLANE**

Shepard looked around.

Everything which ever existed or could exist was there. Forming, taking shape and then disappearing into nothingness. Shepard could see every color, every sensation possible and impossible inside that plane.

Entire beings of unimaginable proportion, size and physiology formed from birth, grew and died.

Shepard saw a thing came into existence with octopus like head, bat like wings and human like body. Which than vanished in the blink of an eye.

"**Shepard."**

A voice resonated inside the endless plane.

A figure formed before her, dwarfing everything in comparison. It was shapeless, endless mass of black sea.

It took shape.

A giant horned being with red eyes on all over its body. Black flames surrounding it.

"**Shepard."**

Shepard was busy moving the dial on her Omnitrix.

"**Today, we will know which being is superior. Perfection incarnate."**

Shepard also changed shape.

A being with ripple like eyes but looked different from her previous form, like ittook every important aspects from every other species. Shepard then surrounded herself with her Susanoo.

Both of the behemoths were light-years apart but still could understand each other.

"So, this is the plane of probability existence."

"**Correct."**

Both of them charged at each other.

The Universe flickered out of existence.


	20. Chapter 20: A Brave New World

**A BRAVE NEW WORLD**

**EVERYWHERE **

Shepard opened her eyes.

She was everywhere and nowhere.

She could see and know the exact nature of everything.

Every matter or particle which ever existed.

Every end.

Every beginning.

With her single thought the combined citadel fleet was wiped out of existence. Every Batarian suffered and melted.

"Shepard."

A female voice called out.

It was Liara, in her Demoniac form.

"What happened?"

She was torturing someone on Omega, when suddenly she was overwhelmed with something and then everything was normal.

"I called you here."

The Demoniac said.

"Oh, why or maybe better yet how?"

"Because we have won. I have won."

"Won, against the Reapers?"

Liara asked surprised, Shepard clearly did something. And why was she having an overwhelming urge to love her, serve her.

Even from before.

Shepard smirked.

The scene was changed, they were now standing on a planet. A beautiful sunset in front of them.

The sky was a mix of red and blue. Clouds taking different shape.

"By the Goddess! This is beautiful, Shepard. Where are we?"

Liara asked. She felt overjoyed, overwhelmed.

She was not alone, everyone in the entire universe was sensing the same thing.

Serving Shepard.

Shepard smiled, she was now eternal, infinite, immortal.

The Universe obeyed her every whim, her every command. She could form or destroy galaxies with a single thought.

"Where are we?"

Shepard repeated Liara's question, like teasing her.

"In a Brave New World."


	21. Chapter 21: Side Note

Note: Just a little side note containing my ramblings and what happened between Harbinger and Super Shepard

**Battle Scenario.**

I took my inspiration from Gurren Lagann.

Shepard in her perfect Omnitrix Demoniac form and her Susanoo vs Harbinger's Apocalyptic form.

The entire battle goes according to how it went in Gurren Lagann, but with only Shepard not anyone else.

Shepard won and beat Harbinger into nothingness with her bare hands.

And finally gave Harbinger her catchphrase "Nanomachines Son!"

**Ramblings:**

I never liked Mass effect 3.

Or how Shepard died in the second game. And how come the councilors couldn't believe Shepard.

Shepard should just show them the recordings of his or her conversation with Sovereign to them.

They declared Saren rogue on the basis of a Quarian's Omni tool finding after all.

I wished or hoped for an option for renegade Shepard to become the Shadow Broker, if only to see the look on Liara's face.

Mass Effect 1 is the perfect game and my most favorite.

I always liked the Villain in the movie, well before they are defeated.

I always hated how seemingly out of nowhere the Hero finds something to defeat the Villain. It's illogical.

**Inspiration**

I ripped off many little things from different games and movies and combined into one.

Metal Gear Revengeance_. "Nanomachines Son!"_

Naruto. _"Almighty Push, Biotic Susanoo!"_

Pacific Rim. "_Typhoon vas Moore."_

Blassreiter._ "Demoniac."_

Iron Man _"Shepard and Tali's Mark V Iron Maiden Armor."_

Crysis _"Nano Suit."_

And etc.

It was my first fanfic. I wished I could drag it more but I am mortal and I have a limited lifespan.

And finally I would like to thank anotherboarduser for all of his reviews.


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